Oberwesel (German: [oːbɐˈveːzl̩] ⓘ) is a town on the Middle Rhine in the Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis (district) in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.

As in many of the region’s towns, Oberwesel quite possibly had its beginnings as a Celtic settlement, named Vosavia or Volsolvia.

In 1220, Emperor Frederick II dissolved the pledge and Oberwesel became a free imperial city.

In 1255, Oberwesel became a member of the Rhenish League of Towns (Rheinischer Städtebund), but in 1309, it lost its status as a free imperial city and fell under the lordship of the Electorate of Trier, to which it belonged until Secularization after the French Revolutionary Wars in 1802.

The town's importance in the Middle Ages can be gathered from the two great ecclesiastical foundations that it harboured (Our Lady's – or Liebfrauen in German – and Saint Martin's), as well as the two monasteries and the Beginenhof.

In iconography, Werner was shown with a winegrower's billhook, a shovel and a pan as attributes, and was said to be the patron saint of winemakers.

A 14th-century Latin chronicle reports of an alleged host desecration: Jews from local communities hung Werner up by the feet to rob him of a piece of sacramental bread that he was about to swallow.

At the spot on the riverbank in Bacharach where his body washed up, the Gothic, Rheinromantik Saint Werner's Chapel was built.

Heinrich Heine treated the legend in his fragmentary tale, Der Rabbi von Bacherach.

[3] From 7 November 1970, the town formed with the municipalities of Damscheid, Dellhofen, Langscheid, Laudert, Niederburg, Perscheid, Urbar and Wiebelsheim the Verbandsgemeinde of Oberwesel.

Building work on the Church of Our Lady (Liebfrauenkirche, or Pfarrkirche Liebfrauen as it is styled above) began in 1308.

Given its architecture and appointments (golden altar, rood screen, wall paintings), it is among the Rhineland’s most important Gothic churches.

Individual winemakers within this appellation – Einzellagen – are Sieben Jungfrauen, Oelsberg, Bienenberg, St. Martinsberg, Goldemund, Bernstein and Römerkrug.

This was meant to safeguard this traditional Einzellage, for not only will it spare the winemakers some work, but it will also ensure good yields even in dry summers.