It was founded by the Welfs, a Frankish dynasty in Swabia who became later Dukes of Bavaria and Saxony and who made the castle of Ravensburg their ancestral seat.

Following the Reformation a "paritetic" government emerged, meaning an equal distribution of public offices between the Catholic and Protestant confession.

This system was approved at the end of the Thirty Years' War in the Peace of Westphalia (1648) which named four "Paritetic Imperial Cities" (German: Paritätische Reichsstädte): Augsburg, Biberach, Dinkelsbühl and Ravensburg.

In 1803 the Immerwährende Reichstag passed the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss, a bill which included the secularisation and mediatisation of many German states — the first meaning the confiscation of the estates belonging to the church, the second the incorporation of the imperial estates and Imperial Free Cities into larger regional states.

Since Ravensburg was impoverished and depopulated after the Thirty Years' War, only a few new buildings were raised during the 18th and the early 19th century.

The benefit of this economic stagnation was the conservation of a widely intact medieval city with nearly all towers and gates of the historic fortification.

Ravensburg, Weingarten, and Friedrichshafen (on the shores of Lake Constance) share the functionality of a Oberzentrum (that is, the highest-ranked centre in the system of spatial planning and development in Baden-Württemberg).

Ravensburger AG, whose headquarters are located in the city, is a company internationally known for board games, jigsaw puzzles and children's books.

The pastry factory de:Tekrum (Theodor Krumm GmbH & Co. KG) is another company with an internationally known brand name.

In Horgenzell near Ravensburg, the Ravensburg-Horgenzell transmitter transmitted Deutschlandfunk on the medium wave frequency 756 kHz.

The city's association football club FV Ravensburg, formed in 1893, has played in the Oberliga Baden-Württemberg on three occasions from 1978 to 1983, from 1998 to 2000 and again since 2003.