The origins of Monheim date back into the 7th century, when a village was formed at the crossing of the Gailach, a small river running into the Altmühl.

In 893, the abbess of the convent, Mother Liubila, transferred it to the Bishop of Eichstätt, Erchanbald, and it was then that Monheim was first mentioned in an official document.

It became an important place of pilgrimage due to the relics of Saint Walpurga, a former abbess of the convent in Eichstätt.

The town was fortified, lying at the intersection of the important trade route from Augsburg to Nürnberg, which is nowadays the Bundesstraße 2, and the road from Nördlingen to Neuburg an der Donau.

The Swedish army under the King of Sweden, Gustav Adolf, ransacked Monheim in 1632 during the Thirty Years' War, an event the town took long to recover from.

The current town hall was built by a rich Jewish merchant, the Court Jew Abraham Elias Model, between 1714 and 1720.

The end of the War of Bavarian Succession in 1779 saw the reunification of Bavaria with Palatinate-Neuburg and Neuburg lost its status as a capital.

During the Nazi era, Monheim saw its mayor, Josef Hofmann, replaced with local party leader Albert Königsdorfer.

When the figurine of Saint Walpurga on the fountain of the market square was replaced by a more war-like motif in October 1937, the Catholic parish priest, Anton Geitner, an anti-Nazi, refused the Nazi salute and found himself heavily criticised.

The reorganisation of communities in Bavaria and Germany between 1972 and 1978 meant that Monheim came in charge of the previously independent surrounding villages, enlarging the town in size and population.

[6] The train line has now been completely removed and only the railway station is still in place, now home to the local pigeon breeders club.

Its team competes at the highest national level of the sport, often attracting foreign athletes, especially from Brazil.

'Hortulus Monheimensis' is a florilegium of watercolour sketches commissioned in 1615 by Wolfgang Philippus Brandt, the local governor or magistrate.

Fossil crocodiles, such as Geosaurus, Cricosaurus, Rhacheosaurus and Steneosaurus are all known from quarries near Monheim, while Archaeopteryx was found in the region around Solnhofen.

The Gailach, the little river who runs through Monheim, disappears in the ground to travel underneath the surface shortly after passing Warching and resurfaces in Mühlheim, approximately 4 km further on.

A marked trail, the Karstlehrpfad Monheimer Alb with signs in German explaining the origins of the landscape and the geology.