The town is believed to have been founded by the counts of Andechs probably around the mid-12th century,[3] but was first mentioned in 1194 as Baierrute in a document by Bishop Otto II of Bamberg.

Even older traces of human presence were found in the hamlets of Meyernberg: pieces of pottery and wooden crockery were dated to the 9th century based on their decoration.

[4] While Bayreuth was previously (1199) referred to as a villa ("village"), the term civitas ("town") appeared for the first time in a document published in 1231.

As early as 1361 Emperor Charles IV conferred on Burgrave Frederick V the right to mint coins for the towns of Bayreuth and Kulmbach.

Matthäus Merian described this event in 1642 as follows: "In 1430 the Hussites from Bohemia attacked / Culmbach and Barreut / and committed great acts of cruelty / like wild animals / against the common people / and certain individuals.

/ The priests / monks and nuns they either burnt at the stake / or took them onto the ice of lakes and rivers / (in Franconia and Bavaria) and doused them with cold water / and killed them in a deplorable way / as Boreck reported in the Bohemian Chronicle, page 450".

A turning point in the town's history came in 1603 when Margrave Christian, the son of the elector, John George of Brandenburg, moved the aristocratic residence from the castle of Plassenburg above Kulmbach to Bayreuth.

To commemorate this feat, he had the Margrave Fountain built as a monument on which he is depicted as the victor of the Turks; it now stands outside the New Palace (Neues Schloss).

During this time, under the direction of court architects, Joseph Saint-Pierre and Carl von Gontard, numerous courtly buildings and attractions were created: the Margravial Opera House with its richly furnished baroque theatre (1744–1748), the New 'Castle' and Sun Temple (1749–1753) at the Hermitage, the New Palace with its courtyard garden (1754 ff) to replace the Old Palace which had burned down through the carelessness of the margrave, and the magnificent row of buildings in today's Friedrichstraße.

He also lacked the means due to the elaborate lifestyle of his predecessor, because the buildings and the salaries of the mainly foreign artists had swallowed up a lot of money.

In 1769, Margrave Charles Alexander, from the Ansbach line of Frankish Hohenzollerns, followed the childless Frederick Christian, and Bayreuth was reduced to a secondary residence.

Following the abdication of the last Margrave, Charles Alexander, from the principalities of Ansbach and Bayreuth on 2 December 1791 its territories became part of a Prussian province.

Bayreuth became the capital of the Bavarian district of Mainkreis, which later transferred into Obermainkreis and was finally renamed as the province of Upper Franconia.

On 17 April 1870 Richard Wagner visited Bayreuth, because he had read about the Margrave Opera House, whose great stage seemed fitting for his works.

However, the orchestra pit could not accommodate the large number of musicians required, for example, for the Ring of the Nibelung and the ambience of the auditorium seemed inappropriate for his piece.

In 1914–15, one section of the northern arm of the Red Main was straightened and widened after areas along the river had been flooded during a period of high water in 1909.

In a series of völkisch and nationalist "Deutscher Tag" (German Days), the NSDAP organised the event in Bayreuth on 30 September 1923.

More than 3,300 military and civilian people gathered (equivalent to 15% of the inhabitants), although Minister of Defence Otto Gessler had forbidden the participation of Reichswehr units.

[8] Among the guests were mayor Albert Preu as well as Siegfried and Winifred Wagner, who invited keynote speaker Adolf Hitler to Wahnfried house.

Bayreuth was to have received a so-called Gauforum, a combined government building and marching square built to symbolise the centre of power in the town.

Under Nazi dictatorship the synagogue of the Jewish Community in Münzgasse was desecrated and looted on Kristallnacht but, due to its proximity to the Opera House it was not razed.

[14] On 5, 8 and 11 April 1945 about one third of the town, including many public buildings and industrial installations were destroyed by heavy air strikes, along with 4,500 houses.

Wieland Wagner's fresh and non-traditional stagings "restored credibility to a theater that had been totally ruined by Nazi ideology.

In 2006, Bayreuth chose its first CSU member and mayor, the lawyer, Michael Hohl, and, in 2007, a Youth Parliament, consisting of 12 young people, aged 14–17 years, was elected for the first time.

Though at first an enthusiastic champion of Wagner's music, Nietzsche ultimately became hostile, viewing the festival and its revellers as symptom of cultural decay and bourgeois decadence – an event which led him to turn his eye upon the moral values esteemed by society as a whole – "Nietzsche clearly preferred to see Bayreuth fail than succeed by mirroring a society gone wrong.

The borough of Bayreuth is divided into 39 districts: Climate in this area has mild differences between highs and lows, and there is adequate rainfall year-round.

Margrave Albert Achilles, who was also Elector of Brandenburg, presented the town of Bayreuth in December 1457 with the coat of arms that it still bears today.

The venues of the Studiobühne are the domicile of the theatre in the Röntgenstraße, the artificial ruins of the Hermitage and the courtyard of piano manufacturer Steingraeber & Söhne.

In the centre of Bayreuth itself, cycling is fairly straightforward due to the relatively flat topography, something which encourages the use bicycles as an everyday means of transport.

For the air sports community in Bayreuth, the airport is a departure point for glider flights taking part in the national Bundesliga competition league.