In the course of the conquest of Saxony by the Franks, Charlemagne made the town at the Pader springs the centre of the conquered region. A visible sign of this was the construction of a royal palace and the first Christian church in 776/777. In addition to its function as a fortress and seat of power, Paderborn was also used as a baptismal palace. At least one productive Pader spring was located directly north of the palace within the fortification walls and was thus able to supply a large number of people and animals with drinking water. The springs are likely to have been an important factor in the choice of location.

Above the Pader spring area towers the Abdinghof church with the neighbouring buildings of the city administration and the Paderborn City Museum. This urban ensemble looks back on more than a thousand years of history. The first monks of the Benedictine Abdinghof Abbey, founded in 1015/16, came from the famous French reform monastery of Cluny. The shell of the church was consecrated in 1031. Bishop Meinwerk was buried in the "secret chapel" below the choir, the so-called crypt, in 1036.

The "Old Brewery", built in 1563, still bears witness to Paderborn's renaissance merchant town today. The large attic, which was used for drying barley malt, is typical of this burgher brewery. Together with a spring from the River Pader in the cellar, these were good conditions for brewing beer, which was one of the main exports of the Hanseatic city of Paderborn. From 1295, Paderborn beer was sold to the northern European economic area of the Hanseatic League.

The western Paderquell area was built up with residential and farm buildings before the Second World War. Since 2008, it has been a registered garden monument with typical 1950s landscape architecture. The garden architect Rudolf Reuter designed this green space with mainly free and curved forms, which includes the water as the main attraction. The cascades, large spring pools, bridges, parallel streams and easy access to the water itself make it possible to experience the Pader water with all the senses.

On 30 August 1892, a monument to the European hygiene movement, the so-called Kaiser-Karls-Bad, was opened on the site of today's senior citizens' residence. In addition to an 18 x 8 metre swimming pool, there were also baths at a time when not every household had its own bathtub. The "bath water" was drawn directly from the "Warm Pader" (14° C) and heated again. First destroyed by aerial bombs in 1945, it was then reopened as the most modern indoor swimming pool in NRW until it was finally demolished in 1996 due to the high costs involved.

In 2017, a functional model of a water art was erected at the historical site of the "Stadtwasserkunst" (city waterworks) from 1523 on the Börnepader. The "Stadtwasserkunst" was a pump driven by water power, which pumped the water from the Börnepader into the Kumps of Paderborn's upper town. The fact that three waterworks existed simultaneously within Paderborn's city walls during the early modern period is a European speciality given the historically low number of inhabitants. The construction of these pumping stations is itself a pan-European achievement, as the local builders were able to draw on models from Greek, Roman, Italian and French engineers.

From 1902 to 1937, a pioneering European drinking water treatment plant was located on the Börnepader not far from today's Wasserkunst functional model. From the middle of the 19th century, Paderborn was plagued by severe cholera and typhoid epidemics, which is why new technical possibilities for purifying drinking water were sought. The new ozonisation process, developed by Siemens & Halske AG, killed pathogenic germs in drinking water. Delegations from Paris and St. Petersburg travelled to the Pader to see this new process for themselves.

The Schwarzendahlsche Mühle, which was built in 1873, still bears witness to the mill architecture at the end of the "Gründerzeit". At the confluence of the Börne-, Damm- and Warme Pader rivers, several smaller mill wheels turned here before 1873, which were demolished for the construction of the Schwarzendahlsche Mühle. The Pader offers unique site conditions for mill operations: The high spring discharge (average 4,200 l/s) and the constant water temperatures (even in winter!) were the reasons for the high density of mill wheels in the town centre (20 mill wheels in 1785).

Paderborn is uniquely located exactly on the important natural boundary between the low mountain range and the lowlands - marked by the bubbling Pader springs. They are among the highest-flowing springs in Germany: not a stream, but a river from the very beginning. On average, there are around 4,200 litres - enough water to fill 40 bathtubs per second. These numerous springs are very different in character, some pouring permanently, some only temporarily. But despite its impressive volume of water, the Pader loses its name after just 4.6 kilometres in the district of Schloß Neuhaus. Here it flows into the Lippe, which has much less water. This makes the Pader the shortest river in Germany. The origin of the many springs in Paderborn city centre is explained by the special geological conditions of the Westphalian Bay. It is a large hollow with several layers of rock lying on top of each other, but with different levels of water permeability, which rise towards the edge of the hollow. Water-bearing limestone layers lie above impermeable rock, which are sealed off at the top by the water-storing Emscher marl as if by a lid. On the Paderborn plateau, the rainfall and streams seep into the numerous fissures and joints in this rock. Several large fissure systems are aligned with Paderborn, so that large amounts of water seep into the city centre.

The mill wheel at the Stümpelsche Mühle seems to have been turning for centuries. But first impressions are deceptive. It was only installed in 2014. Instead of flour, electricity is now generated using the power of water. But this also has a long tradition. At the end of the 19th century, the first millers switched over and operated their mills with electricity generators. In 1889, electric light was already shining in Paderborn. In contrast to the historical mills, which interfered deeply with the river ecosystem via mill ditches and dams, energy utilisation is less problematic today. Above all, the course of the river is not altered. This is usually the case when turbines are used to generate electricity.

The first bathing and spa operations date back to 1841, when Franz Anton Evers invested in the corresponding infrastructure. At that time, the bathing and spa industry was booming throughout Europe. Today's "Ottilienquelle" owes its name to the wife of Dortmund investor Friedrich Wiesehahn. According to legend, her lung condition was alleviated by the spring water in the 1850s. This founding myth forms the basis of the "Curanstalt Inselbad", which the Cologne pulmonologist Dr Wilhelm Brügelmann established from the 1880s as a sanatorium recognised throughout Germany. The spa was finally closed in 1912. A public swimming pool still existed here until around 1948.

The Padersee (Pader lake) between the centre of Paderborn and Schloss Neuhaus was created between 1979 and 1980. In the event of flooding, the lake can be dammed up to one metre higher in order to retain around 74,000 cubic metres of rainwater. Over the years, it became increasingly clear that the construction of the artificial lake was causing ecological problems: For fish and other aquatic organisms, the Pader was separated into distinct parts and was no longer biologically passable. To eliminate the ecological problems, the Padersee bypass was put into operation in October 2018. Since then, the Pader has been flowing around the lake for around 750 metres. Intended as a repair measure to remedy earlier mistakes, the bypass has now become an ecologically extraordinarily valuable permanent habitat for adapted animal and plant species.

Improving the yield characteristics of grassland through targeted watering (then also known as "Flößen") with river water or settlement water was an essential part of the historical cultural landscapes in Central Europe. For Paderborn and the surrounding area, raft meadow farming became particularly important from the middle of the 19th century. Agricultural intensification in the wake of population growth and the associated increase in the need for fodder for the growing livestock population prompted private owners of the meadows along the Pader to carry out temporary watering on a situational basis. From today's perspective of industrialised intensive agriculture, the secondary biotopes of the raft meadows offer positive effects on the diversity of plant and animal species due to a high degree of site diversity, pronounced micro-reliefs, water retention and small-scale vegetation patterns.

Water is omnipresent in Castle Neuhaus. When visitors enter the castle grounds today and walk through the castle courtyard into the baroque garden, they see the modern fountain theatre with small fountains and a reflection of the castle. In front of it is the parterre with two water basins and small fountains. It was reconstructed according to a garden plan from 1790. At that time, a large fountain projected water 18 metres into the air - the central eye-catcher of the baroque garden. It was Prince-Bishop Clemens August, a later-born son of the Bavarian House of Wittelsbach, who developed the entire palace grounds into a Baroque work of art from 1730 onwards. Neuhaus was intended to reflect the prince's European status. Clemens August was also Elector of Cologne and thus one of the most influential princes of the Old Empire. By basing the design of the garden by Franz Christoph Nagel on the important art centres such as Würzburg, Munich, Vienna and Paris, the client sought to be on an equal footing with these political centres of power. And he probably succeeded. A contemporary visitor was impressed and wrote that it was a "quite royal garden".