The Vintage Hotel & Spa

The Vintage furnishes itself from the 1950s and 1960s, or at any rate in their manner, since the pieces were made for it. The colour went on with conviction. One bedroom has terracotta walls and heavy brown curtains drawn back from tall windows onto iron balconies, with a brass drinks trolley between them. The Blue Bistrot, named for Lisbon's skies, lines its marble tables along a curved banquette in navy velvet. The spa is darker: brick-red walls, velvet and brass, a mosaic pool with a metal spout pouring into it, and herbal tea in ceramics made for the spa by Cecile Mestelan, a Lisbon artist. On the roof, the V Rooftop Bar sits under canvas sails among papyrus and broad tropical leaves, looking over terracotta roofs to São Jorge Castle on its hill.

Recommended for couples in Lisbon for the city, who want a spa to come back to before dinner and a bar on the roof after it. Every treatment brings an hour of the water lounge, sauna and steam room with it, and children may swim only from seven to ten in the morning and two to five in the afternoon, which leaves the hour before dinner to the grown-ups. Of the four room types, the Castle Suite is the one to book: 40 to 50 square metres with a sitting room, and windows on the city and on the castle the bar faces. Breakfast is included when booked direct. On some afternoons The Hangout, the lobby bar, is where a guided walk sets off for four or five galleries in Estrela, on a route redrawn before each walk to follow what is on their walls.