Today, Reutlingen is a home to an established textile industry and also houses machinery, leather goods and steel manufacturing facilities.

Some time around 1030, Count Egino started to build a castle on top of the Achalm, one of the largest mountains in Reutlingen district (about 706 m).

Reutlingen's earliest documented mention dates back to 1089 in the Bempflingen Treaty, which was an inheritance agreement between Zwiefalten Monastery and the descendants of the Achalm Count.

[10] As a result of such struggles, Reutlingen became an Imperial City of the Holy Roman Empire, free from allegiance to the Duke of Württemberg.

In 1530, Reutlingen's city council signed the Augsburg Confession, and in 1580 and the Formula of Concord, key documents of Lutheranism.

The worst disaster in the history of Reutlingen happened in 1726, when a major fire swept through the city, destroying 80% of all residential houses and almost all public buildings, and making 1,200 families homeless.

On Mutscheltag (the first Thursday after Epiphany), townspeople gather in halls and homes to play games of dice, the winner of which earns parts or whole Mutschel loaves of bread.