The old Germanic word Wang(en) means a piece of land at the foot of a slope.
In its coat of arms, Wangen bears the keys of heaven of the apostle Peter, which passed from the Upper Aargau property of the St. Peter monastery in the Black Forest to the seal of the Wangen town bailiff and from him to the town and the lordship. The coat of arms was first used in 1380 for a sales deed.
Embedded in its ring walls, the small town nestles inconspicuously, almost modestly, on the banks of the gently flowing Aare, leans against the hills of the Gensberg and looks up to the heights of the nearby Jura. Its bridges are links between the former Bipperamt, at the foot of the blue mountain, and the other communities in the district, which extend into the southern hills of the Buchsiberge. For these areas, the former bailiff's castle is still the seat of certain branches of the district administration. The bridge settlement owes its existence to its favourable location on the river. As the guardian of the Aare crossing and a stopover point for shipping, the town was a military base and a protected storage and trading centre for the Oberaargau. But without a hinterland, located close to Solothurn and Wiedlisbach, Wangen an der Aare was limited in its development opportunities from the start. It often had to fight against economic hardship. When shipping on the Aare ended, craft businesses with many jobs disappeared. Later, the old warehouses formed the foundation for today's military base. The only thing that developed from the horsehair spinning mill, mentioned in 1748, was the mattress factory Roviva Roth & Cie. AG, which still exists today. In the 1980s, Wangen an der Aare had to cope with the crisis in its most important branch of industry, the clothing industry. One of the municipality's key goals today is therefore to create new jobs. The development of building and industrial land creates the conditions for moderate development. In addition, the "little town" is to be made more livable and revitalized through targeted measures. The old wooden bridge, the striking castle, the rectory, the clock tower, the salt house, the church and the old mill are the components of a closely interwoven whole that makes up the small town.