A Fantasy Author’s Search History: When was the medieval period?

Perhaps the most important question when writing medieval fiction is to know when the real medieval time period was so that when you do research, you can be mostly accurate on what kinds of things are in the book. Of course, there’s always room to take some creative liberties.

From what I have looked up, the medieval period (Middle Ages/Dark Ages) seemed to last from about 500 to 1500 A.D. (or C.E.). I’ve also seen more exact numbers of 476 to 1492.