Before the Renaissance, there were the Middle Ages. Middle Ages. An unfair name, you will think. Because you have just discovered Siena and San Gimignano.

And you find there is nothing transitional about the Cathedral of Siena, dominating the city for eight hundred years. Nothing middling about the Town Hall palace, which has seen seven centuries come and go. Nothing mediocre about San Gimignano’s towers and houses and churches, jewels of the Romanesque and the Gothic.

As you lunch in a medieval castle among the Tuscan hills, you will feel the Middle Ages were a time of wonders — an age in their own right. They deserve a better name.