After the fall of Númenor, Avallonë became the port of arrival for ships taking the Straight Road.
Tolkien was apparently evoking the island of Avalon in the legend of King Arthur, although the form Avallonë also has the meaning "near Valinor" in Elvish; similarly, Númenor's alternative name Akallabêth, "Downfallen" (also the title of the fourth part of The Silmarillion), translates into Quenya as Atalantë, evoking Atlantis.
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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