Thermes de Christus

The Thermes de Christus sit at 266 allee de Christus in Saint-Paul-les-Dax, directly opposite the Christus lake, and belong to Thermes Adour, the group that grew out of the springs found at Dax in 1966 and now runs six thermal establishments across Dax and its neighbour Saint-Paul-les-Dax. The Saint-Paul-les-Dax spa quarter itself dates from 1983, when the Hotel du Lac opened alongside the Christus baths; the hotel, today a Brit Hotel, still stands next to the treatment building and shares its reception arrangements. The house is a cure establishment rather than a leisure pool: it takes the eighteen-day courses prescribed by a doctor and reimbursed by the French health system, in rheumatology and in phlebology, alongside health-education programmes and six-day preventive mini-cures. The interior is described by the operator as fully air-conditioned, finished in wood, mosaic and warm colours, with spacious and well-lit treatment rooms.

What is treated here is Dax mud as much as Dax water. The peloide applied at Christus is silt dug from the banks of the Adour, ground in thermal water and matured for six days with cultivated cyanobacteria; it is produced by the town's municipal mud authority, the single supplier for every thermal house in Dax and Saint-Paul-les-Dax, delivered in ten-kilo sacks and given to each patient as a personal quota rather than shared between cabins. In the rheumatology course it is applied for fifteen minutes at 41 to 44 degrees and followed by a thermal jet shower. Around it the group lists the usual thermal register - high-pressure and underwater showers, turpentine-substitute showers, local steam boxes for hands and feet, hydromassage and mobilisation exercises in a thermal-water pool led by a physiotherapist. Christus is named with Sourceo and Regina as one of three establishments offering the penetrating shower, a fine warm rain worked over the back muscles. The operator states certification to ISO 9001 and Aquacert.

The season is long but not year-round: in 2026 the house works from 2 March to 28 November, with treatments given every day except Sunday, and on public holidays unless the holiday falls on a Sunday. A bathrobe and towel are provided each day of the cure; guests bring their own swimwear, a bathing cap, which is compulsory during treatments, and plastic pool sandals. A thermal shuttle can be booked by those lodged away from the site. Across Dax and Saint-Paul-les-Dax the group reports some 26,000 cure guests a year, three thermal springs of its own and, beside the six cure houses, the Sourceo aqualudic centre, which is the separate leisure and spa address of the group rather than part of Christus.