History
Even before the Romans came, people lived here, because the location favoured transport (confluence of the Nahe and Rhine, and the Rhine’s entry into the gorge), a Celtic (Gaulish) settlement by the name of Binge – meaning “rift”. In the early first century AD, Roman troops were stationed in Bingen on the Rhine Valley Road. They changed the location's name to Bingium. There the Romans erected a wooden bridge across the Nahe and constructed a bridgehead castrum. A Roman Mithraic monument, which included a mutilated sculpture representing the nativity of Mithra from a rock, was discovered in Bingen; one of its inscriptions is dated 236.
The presbyter Aetherius of Bingen founded sometime between 335 and 360 a firmly Christian community. Bearing witness to this time is Aetherius’s gravestone, which can still be seen in Saint Martin’s Basilica. After the fall of the Limes, the town became a Frankish royal estate and passed in 983 by the Donation of Verona from Otto II to Archbishop Willigis of Mainz. Under Otto III the Binger Kammerforst (forest) came into being. Under Willigis, some way up the river Nahe, the stone Drususbrücke (bridge) was built.
The inhabitants of Bingen strove time and again for independence, which led in 1165 through disputes between the Archbishop of Mainz and the Emperor to destruction. In the 13th century, Bingen was a member of the Rhenish League of Towns. The building of Klopp Castle (Burg Klopp) in the mid 13th century could well be seen as being tied in with this development. A last attempt was the town’s unsuccessful participation in the German Peasants' War in 1525. From the Archbishop the Cathedral Chapter of Mainz acquired the town in two halves in 1424 and 1438. Until the late 18th century Bingen remained under its administration. Like many towns in the valley, Bingen suffered several town fires and wars.
From 1792 to 1813, the town was, as part of the département of Mont-Tonnerre (or Donnersberg – both names meaning “Thunder Mountain”), French after French Revolutionary troops had occupied the Rhine’s left bank. In 1816, after the Congress of Vienna, the town passed to the Grand Duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt while today’s outlying centre of Bingerbrück went to Prussia’s Rhine Province, making Bingen a border town until 1871, when the German Empire was founded.
On 7 June 1969, the formerly Prussian municipality of Bingerbrück was amalgamated. On 22 April 1972 came Dromersheim’s and Sponsheim’s amalgamation with Bingen. The epithet am Rhein has been borne since 1 July 1982.
For the State Garden Show in 2008 in Bingen, the Rhineside areas in the town underwent extensive modernization.
Read more about this topic: Bingen Am Rhein
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