Salenstein was the home village of Napoleon III, who lived at Castle Arenenberg in his youth.

In the Eichholz area near Salenstein, burial mounds from the late Hallstatt period (750-450 BC) have been discovered.

[3] In the 11th century, Salenstein Castle was built as a seat for the Ministerialis (unfree knights in the service of a feudal overlord) officials of Reichenau Abbey.

In 1401, the noble Clare of Breitenstein, founded a Béguinage house in the Götschen woods, which was known as Blümlistobel.

Mannenbach and Salenstein had to seek credit several times and 1573 they had to use their common forest (German: Allmend) as collateral for a loan.

In 1817 the ex-Queen Hortense de Beauharnais of Holland acquired Arenenberg Castle for a residence while she was in exile.

[4] The municipality is located in Kreuzlingen District, on a terrace in the Seerücken hills between Berlingen and Ermatingen.

[14] The historical population is given in the following table:[3][15] There are three castles; Arenenberg (with chapel and Napoleon Museum), Eugensberg and Louisenberg as well as the pilgrimage chapel of St. Aloysius in Mannenbach on Louisenbergstrasse 14 that are listed as Swiss heritage sites of national significance.

[17] Arenenberg Castle was built in the early 16th century by the mayor of Constance (1546–1548) Sebastian Geissberg.

In 1817, Johann Baptist von Streng sold it to the exiled Hortense de Beauharnais, the daughter of ex-Empress Joséphine, for 30,000 guilders.

As arranged by Napoleon, Hortense had to marry his brother Louis Bonaparte, and the couple were named King and Queen of the Netherlands (1806 to 1810).

The royal couple not only suffered with the demise of the rule of Napoleon, but also had an unhappy marriage leading to a separation.

Her brother, Eugène de Beauharnais, bought the nearby Sandegg Castle and built a villa close by.

While Hortense initially spent time at her house in Augsburg, Arenenberg soon became her main domicile.

Her son Louis Napoléon, the future emperor Napoléon III, who had attended school in Augsburg, visited Arenenberg as a teenager; there he was further educated and then attended the Swiss military academy at Thun, receiving Swiss citizenship.

In 1837, while he was exiled and living in New York City, Louis Napoleon received notice of his mother's deteriorating health and returned to Arenenberg.

After mourning, Louis Napoleon had to leave Switzerland, due to French pressure, and moved to London.

After Napoleon III's death, Eugénie visited Arenenberg several times before she donated it in 1906 to the Canton Thurgau.

[19] Salenstein sits on the Lake Line between Schaffhausen and Rorschach and is served by the St. Gallen S-Bahn at Mannenbach-Salenstein railway station.

Between spring and autumn, the URh offers regular boat services on the High Rhine and Untersee between Schaffhausen and Kreuzlingen, via Konstanz.

At the lower primary level, there are 18 children or 69.2% of the total population who are female and 5 or 19.2% are not Swiss citizens.