It acquired its present name after Saint Andeolus, the 'apostle of the Vivarais', a disciple of St. Polycarp, supposedly arriving from Asia Minor, who evangelized the area under Emperor Septimius Severus, and was martyred in 208.

Several patricians' houses are still to be seen in the centre of the city (although a part of it was bombed by Allied forces at the end of World War II, missing the hanging bridge - which was replaced afterwards by the existing one).

Another noticeable economical source of the area - already a typical mediterranean zone - is wine, with the Côtes du Rhône méridionales (southern) gathering four other communes around the city (Saint-Marcel-d'Ardèche, Saint-Just and Saint-Martin-d'Ardèche).

The area is popular for tourism and summer homes, and the city is known as having the richest cultural heritage in Ardèche: there are many dolmens in the Bois du Laoul forest and a sculpture of Mithra near the Vauclusian springs of the Tourne.

A mediaeval fort with embellishments dating from the 15th and 17th century, the entire construction a classified historical monument, the Bishops' palace of Bourg-Saint-Andéol with inside the museum René Margotton, front of Rhône, is one of the largest and most complex in the Vivarais region.