Stendal is the seat of a University of Applied Sciences (Fachhochschule) and preserves a picturesque old town including a historic market and several churches.

The town Stendal consists of Stendal proper and the following 18 Ortschaften or municipal divisions:[3] A settlement named Steinedal in the Eastphalian Balsamgau of Saxony, then a possession of Saint Michael’s Abbey in Hildesheim, was mentioned in a deed allegedly issued by Emperor Henry II in 1022.

The fortified town near the Elbe crossing at Tangermünde was actually founded and granted Magdeburg rights by the first Brandenburg margrave Albert the Bear about 1160.

Stendal quickly prospered as a centre of commerce and trade; it received city walls about 1300, the citizens joined the Hanseatic League in 1358 and purchased the privilege of minting from the Brandenburg margraves in 1369.

In 1456 the Hohenzollern elector Frederick II Irontooth founded a convent of Augustinian nuns, which today is the site of a museum.

For centuries part of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, Stendal with the Altmark region passed to the Prussian Province of Saxony after the Napoleonic Wars.

Stendal was hit by 10 air raids, and more than 300 civilians died when Röxe, a residential area in the southern part of the town, was devastated by bombs.

In April 1945, the aerodrome served as starting place of the Sonderkommando Elbe unit, only a few days before the local authorities surrendered to the US Army.

On May 4, the commander of the Wehrmacht 12th Army, General Maximilian von Edelsheim, signed the capitulation document at the Stendal town hall.

Until 1994, the Stendal barracks served as home base for a riflemen division of the Soviet 2nd Guards Tank Army.

On 1 January 2010, the town Stendal absorbed the former municipalities Buchholz, Groß Schwechten, Heeren, Möringen, Nahrstedt, Staats, Uchtspringe, Uenglingen, Volgfelde, and Wittenmoor.

Its holdings include biographical documents, works, designs and diagrams as well as Greek sculptures or casts, along with other small artworks from antiquity.