Bad Bentheim (German: [baːt ˈbɛnthaɪm] ⓘ; Dutch Low Saxon: Beantem) is a town in the southwestern part of Lower Saxony, Germany, in the district of Grafschaft Bentheim on the borders of North Rhine-Westphalia and the Netherlands roughly 15 km south of Nordhorn and 20 km northeast of Enschede.

Bad Bentheim lies right on the Dutch border, its immediate neighbours on the other side being de Lutte and Losser, both Catholic places in the province of Overijssel (Twente region).

Not far away lie the Dutch cities of Almelo, Enschede and Hengelo, and on the German side Lingen, Rheine, Münster and Osnabrück.

The town comprises the centres of Achterberg, Bardel, Gildehaus, Hagelshoek, Holt und Haar, Sieringhoek, Waldseite and Westenberg.

In 1945, the British occupational authorities stripped “brown Bentheim” of its district seat and transferred it to the working-class town of Nordhorn, which was more centrally located.

In Otto von Bismarck's honour, a sandstone statue in his likeness was raised on the square that also bears his name, Bismarckplatz, in Bentheim's inner town.

In the course of municipal reform in Lower Saxony, the town of Bentheim, the Samtgemeinde (a municipality made up of several centres) of Gildehaus (whose member communities were Gildehaus, Achterberg, Hagelshoek, Holt und Haar, Waldseite and Westenberg) and the communities of Bardel and Sieringhoek merged on 1 March 1974 to form the unified Town of Bentheim.

Supposedly, the pedestal on which stands New York’s Statue of Liberty is even made out of Bentheim sandstone, but other German towns, among them Obernkirchen, claim that they furnished the stone for that undertaking.

This same charge is also seen in several other coats of arms from Bentheim district, among them those borne by Nordhorn, Neuenhaus, De Wijk and Geldermalsen.

As with the old county, the town of Bad Bentheim has mostly been shaped by Protestant belief, held by 52.6% of the townsfolk (30 June 2006), of whom 36.7% are Reformed and 15.9% Lutherans.

The high keep, known as the Pulverturm, or “Powder Tower”, affords visitors a good view over Bad Bentheim.

The Bad Bentheim open-air plays have an unusual venue set in three disused quarries, thereby offering an extraordinary natural backdrop.

Also worth seeing is the Reformed Protestant church with its Calvinistic interior décor, within which, among others, Count Arnold II zu Bentheim-Tecklenburg lies buried.

Outside, the building is rather plain, but inside there are stately, early Baroque altars and remains of the original glazing in the windows in the north wall.

The Weggen is a metre-long loaf of raisin bread brought by friends and neighbours after a child's birth to the family to celebrate the newborn's future.

These are rather hard, long-keeping biscuits baked with a great deal of caraway, and are eaten in Bad Bentheim and Schüttorf, as well as the neighbouring areas, mainly around Christmastime.

The town lies on Bundesstraße 403 and is furthermore connected to the long-distance road network through the Autobahnen A 30 (Bad Oeynhausen – Osnabrück – Hengelo) and A 31 (Emden – Oberhausen).

Bad Bentheim has small and medium-sized businesses for tourism typical of smaller spa towns: cafés, hotels and guesthouses.

After the Second World War, the town of Bad Bentheim sought to improve once again the noticeably cooler relations with its neighbours to the west, that is to say, the Dutch.

Prakke, who died in 1992, was a citizen of the Dutch town of Assen, with which Bad Bentheim has been intensively cultivating a partnership since 1959.