The festival and spa town of Bad Hersfeld (Bad is "spa" in German; the Old High German name of the city was Herolfisfeld) is the district seat of the Hersfeld-Rotenburg district in northeastern Hesse, Germany, roughly 50 km southeast of Kassel.

In the southwest lie the Vogelsberg Mountains, in the northwest the Knüll and in the northeast the Seulingswald (ranges, the latter visible in the background of this image).

The Old Town stands on an alluvial or fluvial fan made of gravel and pebbles, which were washed up between Fulda and Geisbach.

The Lower or Middle Muschelkalk that overlies it can only be found in a narrow, west-to-east running rift stretching between Heenes and Oberrode, north of the inner town.

The newest mineral layer from the Triassic – the Lower Keuper (for example the so-called Lettenkohlensandstein) – is only preserved in the region under a lava flow, which does not show itself above ground anywhere near the town.

[3] Today's main town spreads over the slopes of the Tageberg (323.5 m above sea level), the Frauenberg (310 m), the Wehneberg (320 m) and the Wendeberg (291 m), further reaching into the valleys of the Meisebach and the Geisbach.

Martin Luther visited the monastery, on his way back from the Diet of Worms in 1521 and held a sermon in the abbey church on 1 May.

In the centuries that followed, the Abbey's might ebbed as after the Great Interregnum (1254–1273) it could no longer enjoy the Holy Roman Emperor’s support.

On Vitalisnacht (Saint Vitalis’s night, 27–28 April) 1378, the power struggle between the Abbey and the town reached its high point.

In 1606, the last abbot died and in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the Imperial Abbey, raised to Electorate, was awarded to the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel.

In 1761, the French burnt the church and the monastery buildings down to destroy their supplies during their retreat, thus destroying one of the largest churches in Germany, and in 1807, the town was almost utterly destroyed by Napoleonic occupation troops, but was spared when it turned out that Baden Lieutenant Colonel Johann Baptist Lingg von Linggenfeld would only carry out Napoleon's orders "literally": he was supposed to set fire to the town on all four sides, and this he did by having four buildings, each standing away from others, set on fire.

In 1945, Hersfeld was once again spared utter destruction, when two officers who had been taken prisoner guaranteed the town's peaceful handover.

Bad Hersfeld was the northernmost American border garrison and the first line of defense during the days of the Cold War.

(Bad is German for "bath", and is a title given towns by state governments in recognition of their spa status).

The leftmost chart below shows the sharp drop in the town's population due to the Thirty Years' War.

The smaller seal from the 14th century shows the patron Simon the Zealot and Jude the Apostle of the Benedictine abbey of Hersfeld with the Wheel of Mainz and the double cross.

In Konrad Duden’s memory is a small museum right next door to the former Old Monastery School (on the New Market).

The Haus Mährisch Schönberg shows a local history collection from the formerly German district of Landkreis Mährisch-Schönberg in what was the Sudetenland (on the New Market).

In the monastery zone stands the Katharinenturm (tower), in which hangs the Lullusglocke, Germany’s oldest dated bell (cast in 1038 AD).

On Linggplatz, the Abbey's old court square (old stone "double cross"), a statue recalls Baden Lieutenant Colonel Johann Baptist Lingg von Linggenfeld, who saved the town from being burnt down by Napoleonic troops in 1807.

They were remodelled in the Renaissance and bear witness, with their gables like the timber-frame houses across the street, to the monastery's last building boom.

Since German reunification Bad Hersfeld has lain in the middle of Germany, favourably located on the A 4 and the A 7, leading the region to develop into a stronghold for logistics firms.

The airfield was built by the United States Army between 1952 and 1953 and belonged to McPheeter Barracks in the outlying centre of Hohe Luft.

Among businesses in the oldest field of endeavour in Bad Hersfeld, textile manufacturing, is the firm Performance Fibers (formerly the Hoechst works, which makes high-strength polyester fibres.

Even during the time of the Festspiele, though, the Arbeitskreis für Musik e. V. ("music workshop") has staged the Bad Hersfelder Festspielkonzerte in the monastery ruins, in the Stadthalle and at Johann-Sebastian-Bach-Haus since 1961.

Among them are the Internationale Bachtage in Hessen und Thüringen at which each year during Holy Week and at Easter great choral works and chamber music extravaganzas are produced.

In autumn, the yearly Cross Music Metalfest is held, at which many hard rock and metal bands from all over the world appear.

The local daily newspaper is the Hersfelder Zeitung (founded in 1763) and the twice weekly advertising flier Kreisanzeiger has been distributed free since 1980.

Also, there are three vocational schools, Berufliche Schulen des Landkreises Hersfeld-Rotenburg (Europaschule), Berufsbildungszentrum Metall and Bildungszentrum für Handel und Dienstleistung.

Further training and higher education is to be had at the Studienakademie für Logistik (department of the Berufsakademie Nordhessen), the evening school for adults, the Academy of the DGUV (Deutsche Gesetzliche Unfallversicherung, or "German Legal Accident Insurance"), the Deutsche Angestellten Akademie, the Evangelische Jugendbildungsstätte Frauenberg ("Evangelical Youth Education Centre", sponsored by the Evangelical Church of Electoral Hesse-Waldeck), the district folk high school and the Hersfeld-Rotenburg district music school.