Lisbon with Babies and Toddlers (Up to Age 3)

Bicholé is a rhythm-and-senses show for babies and toddlers, built on Saint-Saëns' Carnival of the Animals. The performers become the guests at an animal party: heavy-footed bicholás, high-pitched pecking bicholis, roaring bicholós and fidgety hopping bicholus. Light, color, ribbons and sound fill the stage, and the babies are invited into the game rather than asked to sit still. It suits a baby or toddler too young for a regular play.

A rhythmic, sensory take on Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, made for the very youngest. Instead of telling the story from start to finish, three performers use voice, body, movement and the sound of each character's theme to bring the music up close. Babies and their grown-ups listen, play and pick out the bird, the duck and the wolf together. Created by Sandra José.

SandCastle is an indoor play space with a sensory sandbox, role-play corners, slides and soft climbing zones, built around eco-friendly toys rather than noisy attractions. Staff supervise the play area while parents sit in the on-site café or work in a separate coworking room with a live camera view.

Craft sessions and group classes in singing, art and clay modeling run alongside drop-in play.

Jardim do Príncipe Real (officially Jardim França Borges) is a leafy garden square at the top of the Príncipe Real area. Its centerpiece is a huge old cypress whose branches are trained over an iron frame into a wide, shady canopy.

Around it are a children's playground, a pond with a fountain, and café kiosks with outdoor tables. A 19th-century water reservoir lies under the garden.

Praia da Rainha is a sandy cove about 50 meters long, tucked between cliffs in the middle of Cascais. The rocks shelter it, so the water is usually calm enough for paddling and first swims.

A stairway leads down to the sand, and a snack bar with outdoor seating sits nearby. It is named for Queen Amélia, who favored it during royal stays in the town.

A modernist garden designed in the 1960s by landscape architects Gonçalo Ribeiro Telles and António Viana Barreto around the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation buildings. Wooded paths open onto small lawns and a central lake where mallards swim and kingfishers and night herons turn up.

Kids can follow the trails, watch the ducks from the pebble shore on the south bank, and explore the open-air amphitheater.

Toyland Park, in Feijó on the Almada side of the Tagus, is built around a multi-level play frame with giant slides, a ball pit and mazes, plus a kids' disco and face painting.

Parents can climb in and play alongside their babies at no extra cost. Birthday parties and groups of ten or more can add laser tag, which suits kids from 7.

To Be Kid is an indoor play space in Telheiras that families book in full for birthday parties. Inside are pretend-play houses, toys, a dress-up box, a cinema corner with a TV and cushions, and a disco ball with ceiling lights.

Parents choose an all-inclusive party, with snacks, decorations and a cake, or hire the room and bring their own food.

Cabana Parque is a birthday party space at the Escola Trilingue do Restelo school, with an indoor studio and a garden, booked by one group at a time. The garden has a modular play structure with a slide, a mini climbing wall and a tree-trunk path for younger kids.

It suits families who want a small, low-key party in Restelo rather than a big soft-play hall.

Espaço Conchas is a private space for children's birthday parties, right beside Quinta das Conchas park. Its 200 m² is split into rooms: a disco room, a pretend-play room, a room with a bouncy castle, a baby room with a changing area, and a room for the snack table and cake. There is space for parents to sit and talk while the kids play.

Teddy & Friends is a soft play space and family café split into themed rooms: a baby room, a big slide room with a ball pit, an art room, a mini disco, and wooden pretend-play houses.

Parents can sit with a coffee in the café or out on the terrace and garden while kids play. The space also runs kids' workshops in crafts, painting, cooking and face painting.

Jardim da Parada, officially Jardim Teófilo Braga, is a tree-covered garden laid out on a former barracks parade ground. Around the playground sit two ponds with ducks, fish and turtles, a bandstand and the Maria da Fonte statue.

A kiosk café has terrace tables next to the playground, so parents can sit with a coffee and still see the slides.

A teaching farm run by Lisbon City Council, set among the apartment blocks of Olivais. Kids can see donkeys, cows, sheep, goats and chickens, walk through the vegetable gardens and orchard, and find out how bread is baked in a wood-fired oven.

It suits toddlers and early school-age kids best, and a playground sits around the corner for a run afterward.