This article is about the town in France. For information about the mythical island from the Arthurian legends, see Avalon.
Avallon is a town of central France and is the capital of an arrondissement in the department of Yonne. It is 34 m. S.S.E. of Auxerre on a branch of the Paris-Lyon railway. The town, with wide streets and picturesque promenades, is finely situated on a promontory, the base of which is washed on the south by the Cousin, on the east and west by small streams. Its chief building, the church of St Lazare, dates from the 12th century. The two western portals are adorned with sculpture in the ornate Romanesque style; the tower on the left of the facade was rebuilt in the 17th century. The Tour de L'Horloge, pierced by a gateway through which passes the Grande Rue, is an 11th century structure containing a museum on its second floor. Remains of the ancient fortifications, including seven of the flanking towers, are still to be seen. Avallon has a statue of Jauban, the military engineer. The public institutions include the subprefecture, a tribunal of first instance, and a communal college. The manufacture of biscuits and gingerbread, and of leather and farm implements is carried on, and there is considerable traffic in wood, wine, and the live-stock and agricultural produce of the surrounding country.
Avallon (Aballo) was in the middle ages the seat of a viscounty dependent on the duchy of Burgundy, and on the death of Charles the Bold passed under the royal authority.
Avallon (Aballo) was in the Middle Ages the seat of a viscounty dependent on the duchy of Burgundy; on the death of Charles the Bold it passed under the royal authority.
The manufacture of biscuits and gingerbread, and of leather and farm implements is carried on, and there is considerable traffic in wood, wine, and the live-stock and agricultural produce of the surrounding country.
One sees the bare granite of the elevation upon which Avallon is perched, a chaos of rock that plunges boldly some two hundred feet down to the river, receding again a few hundred yards farther on as the waters swirl to the eastward.
He came to Avallon, not to Odenburg as the silly Germans asserted; and he is sitting there in the crystal hall waiting his summons from the grave.
About twenty miles due east of Avallon, well along toward the outer edge of the granite upheaval that characterizes northern Burgundy, is Semur-en-Auxois—a feudal stronghold of the Ardennes in architecture, construction, natural protection, and everything save geography—swaggering insolently on a rocky hill that rises out of the Armancon.
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