Chongqing is a famous cultural city with a history of 3000 years and a glorious revolutionary tradition. It is the birthplace of Bayu culture. Towards the end of the Old Stone Age approximately 20000-30000 years ago, mankind began to live in Chongqing. In Shang and Zhou Dynasties (C.11th century BC) Ba people founded Kingdom Ba and made Chongqing their capital.

Chongqing is said to be the semi-mythical State of Ba that began in 11th century BC, when the Ba people began living here until they were destroyed by the State of Qin. One of the 36 prefectures of the Qin Empire was Ba. It was subsequently called Jiang and Chu Prefecture. In 581 (Sui Dynasty), Chongqing was renamed to Yu Prefecture, named after the local river, Yu River.

Original Chongqing was the center to jurisdiction East Sichuan, South Shanxi, West Hubei, Northwest of Hunan and North Guizhou. In all dynasties since Qin and Han this region was for most of the time a unified administrative region with Chongqing as the center. In the old times Chongqing was called Jiangzhou. Then it was called Bajun, Chuzhou, Yuzhou and Gongzhou.

In 581, Emperor Wendi of Sui Dynasty changed the name of Chuzhou to Yuzhou, thus coming the short form Yu for Chongqing.

In 1189, emperor Guang Zhong of Song Dynasty was first conferred as prince and then ascended the throne. He called it double happiness and Chongqing (double happiness) gained its name. It is almost 800 years now.

In 1362 (Yuan Dynasty), Ming Yuzhen, a peasant rebellion leader, established Daxia Kingdom in Chongqing.

In 1891, Chongqing became the first inland commerce port open to foreigners.

From 1929, Chongqing was a municipality of the Republic of China. Chongqing was the provisional capital of the government of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek during World War II (Second China-Japan War). The capital was moved from Nanjing in 1937 as a consequence of the Battle of Nanjing and the fall of Nanjing to the Japanese troops. After the communist takeover in 1949, the municipality was reduced to a provincial city of the People's Republic.

For nearly 5 decades, Chongqing had been a sub-provincial city of Sichuan Province, until March 14, 1997, as decided in the Eighth National People's Congress, the original Chongqing City was merged with the neighbouring Fuling, Wanxian, and Qianjiang that had been governed by Chongqing City on behalf of the province since September of the previous year. These four prefecture-level entities were all abolished as distinct administrative divisions and formed one new Chongqing Municipality that contained 30,020,000 people in their 43 former counties (without intermediate political levels). The first official ceremony took place on June 18 of that year. The municipality was formed to spearhead China's effort to develop its western regions as well as to coordinate the resettlement of migrants from the Three Gorges Dam project.