The town was first documented in the year 801 under the name
chizzicha and was renowned above all for its mineral springs, which are recorded from as early as 823. At that time, Kissingen was under the domination of
Fulda Abbey, later it fell to the
Counts of Henneberg and was sold to the
bishops of Würzburg in the 14th century. Kissingen was first mentioned as "oppidum" (town) in 1279. The town developed into a spa in the 1500s and recorded its first official spa guest in 1520. In 1814, Kissingen became part of
Bavaria. The town grew to be a fashionable resort in the 19th century, and was extended during the reign of
Ludwig I of Bavaria. Crowned heads of state such as
Empress Elisabeth of Austria,
Tsar Alexander II of Russia and
King Ludwig II of Bavaria, who bestowed the 'Bad' on Kissingen in 1883, were among the guests of the spa at this time. Other well-known visitors to the resort included author
Leo Tolstoy, composer
Gioachino Rossini and artist
Adolph von Menzel. On 10 July 1866, during the
Mainfeldzug (campaign at the river
Main) of the
Austro-Prussian War, Kissingen was the site of fierce
battle between Bavarian and
Prussian troops, which ended with a Prussian victory. Imperial Chancellor
Otto von Bismarck visited Bad Kissingen's spas many times. In 1874, during the
Kulturkampf, he survived an assassination attempt in the town by the Catholic Eduard Franz Ludwig Kullmann. In 1877, he dictated the
Kissingen Dictation (German:
Kissinger Diktat), in which he explained the principles of his foreign policy. Bismarck's former home in Bad Kissingen is now the Bismarck Museum. In June 1911
Alfred von Kiderlen-Waechter, German Secretary of State, and the French ambassador
Jules Cambon had negotiations in Bad Kissingen about Morocco without achieving a solution. The failure of the negotiations led to the
Agadir Crisis. The resort's clientele changed in the 20th century, with ordinary people increasingly replacing nobility as guests. The spa suffered a one-year interruption in 1945, the only closure in its history. Shortly prior to
World War II Manteuffel Kaserne (Manteuffel barracks) was established at the eastern edge of the Bad Kissingen town center by the German military as part of Hitler's program to expand the German
Wehrmacht. In 1945, the American army entered the town peacefully and took over the Kaserne, which was renamed
Daley Barracks in 1953. The barracks were closed in the 1990s after the fall of the
Iron Curtain when the American troops were withdrawn. After the war, the Department of Social Security built clinics in the town. A change in health legislation in the 1990s reduced the opportunities for
German health insurance contracts to fund spa visits, which led to job losses. As a result, efforts were made to attract a new kind of clientele, helped in no small part by the EMNID survey which named Bad Kissingen Germany's best-known spa town. In 2015, about 1.5 million overnight stays of more than 238,000 visitors were registered in the town. With the opening of the
KissSalis Therme in February 2004, Bad Kissingen gained a spa leisure centre and, in December 2004, the German-Chinese Football Academy was opened in the town, where the Chinese "08 Star Team" lived and trained in preparation for the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008. File:Kissingen 1850.jpg|Kissingen about 1850, still with remains of the medieval fortification File:Gefecht-Kapellenfriedhof-Kissingen-1866.jpg|The Battle of Kissingen, 10 July 1866 File:Kaiserkur-Kissingen-1868.jpg|Tsar
Alexander II of Russia (centre, with hat in his hand) and king Ludwig II of Bavaria in 1868 File:Kullmann-Attentat.jpg|Eduard Kullmann (right) shoots at Otto von Bismarck in 1874 File:Kissingen-Bahnhof-1875.jpg|Bad Kissingen with its new station (left), about 1875 == Spa town ==