The name of SENS , the northernmost town in Burgundy, commemorates the Senones , the Gallic tribe whose shaggy troops all but captured Rome in 390 BC; they were only thwarted by the Capitoline geese cackling and waking the garrison. Its heyday as a major ecclesiastical centre was in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but it lost its pre-eminence in the ensuing centuries largely through damage caused by the Hundred Years War and the Wars of Religion. Nowadays, it is a quiet and unexciting place on the banks of the River Yonne, although the cathedral, its treasury and the adjacent museum make a stop worthwhile. … more »