The protagonists of The Lord of the Rings meet in Rivendell, attend the Council of Elrond, and decide on the quest to destroy the One Ring. The protagonists of The Hobbit take advice from Elrond in Rivendell. Sauron's enemies including Elrond formed the White Council, which met in Rivendell, as when the Council decided to eject the Necromancer from his fortress in Dol Guldur. They were married after he was crowned king of both Gondor and Arnor. While in Rivendell, Aragorn met and fell in love with Elrond's daughter, Arwen. Elrond fostered the children of the heirs to Arnor's throne, the last being Aragorn. Rivendell held the heirlooms of the Rangers of the North from the lost kingdom of Arnor, including the shards of Elendil's sword Narsil, the Sceptre of Annúminas, and the Star of Elendil. Rivendell survived repeated attacks in the Third Age by the armies of the Witch-king of Angmar. Rivendell remained as the only Elven settlement in eastern Eriador Gil-galad gave Elrond the Ring Vilya, providing him with the power to protect Rivendell and slow the passage of time in its hidden valley: indeed, Rivendell kept its own calendar. Rivendell was founded in the Second Age after the dark lord Sauron's destruction of the Elvish land of Eregion. Like Hobbiton, it is at about the same latitude as Tolkien's workplace, Oxford. Contrary to the map of western Middle-earth published in The Lord of the Rings, the Great East Road did not, in Tolkien's view, lead through Rivendell: Rivendell was maintained as a hidden valley away from the road to the High Pass. Rivendell lay in eastern Eriador at the edge of a narrow gorge of the river Bruinen (one of the main approaches to Rivendell comes from the nearby Ford of Bruinen), well hidden in the moorlands and foothills of the Hithaeglir or Misty Mountains. Rivendell (top centre) is in the east of Eriador near the Misty Mountains. Sketch map of the north-west of Middle-earth at the end of the Third Age. Others have written that it resembles the Celtic Otherworld of Tír na nÓg and that it physically recalls the valley of Lauterbrunnen in Switzerland where Tolkien had gone hiking in 1911. Scholars have noted that Rivendell was the home of Elvish song, from the hymn to Elbereth, recalling Tolkien's Catholicism, to the complex Song of Eärendil with its multiple poetic devices. Rivendell's feeling of peace may have contributed to the popularity of The Lord of the Rings during the war-troubled 1960s.

It is an important location in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, being the place where the quest to destroy the One Ring began.

Tolkien's fictional world of Middle-earth, representing both a homely place of sanctuary and a magical Elvish otherworld.

Rivendell ( Sindarin: Imladris) is a valley in J. Eastern Eriador: a western valley of the Misty Mountains

The secret world the 3rd age