The settlement's original name was Bingium, a Celtic word that may have meant "hole in the rock",[3][citation needed] a description of the shoal behind the Mouse Tower (German: Mäuseturm), known as the Binger Loch.

Bingen was the starting point for the Via Ausonia, a Roman military road that linked the town with Trier.

Bingen is well known for, among other things, the legend about the Mouse Tower, in which Hatto II, the Archbishop of Mainz, was allegedly eaten by mice.

Saint Hildegard von Bingen, an important polymath, abbess, mystic and musician, one of the most influential medieval composers and one of the earliest Western composers whose music is widely preserved and performed, was born 40 km away from Bingen, in Bermersheim vor der Höhe.

In the early first century AD, Roman troops were stationed in Bingen on the Rhine Valley Road, and rendered the local name as Bingium in Latin.

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.

[5][6] 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.

[8] 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.

[10] For the State Garden Show in 2008 in Bingen, the Rhineside areas in the town underwent extensive modernization.

Christian inhabitants attacked the small Jewish quarter on Rosh Hashanah in 1198 or 1199, and the Jews were driven from the city.

Noted rabbis who taught in the small community included Seligmann Oppenheim, who convened the Council of Bingen (1455–56) in an unsuccessful attempt to establish his authority over the whole of Rhineland Jewry.

Seats are apportioned thus:[12] The town's arms show Saint Martin cutting off a piece of his cloak for a poor man and, in a small inescutcheon in dexter chief, the Wheel of Mainz.

The main railway station, Bingen (Rhein) Hauptbahnhof, lies in the outlying centre of Bingerbrück.

Bingen (Rhein) Stadt station lies 2 km farther east, right across from the historical harbour crane.