The Leaning Tower of Pisa is in excellent health, the local heritage protection agency said Wednesday. "Considering it is an 850-year-old patient with a tilt of around five metres and a subsidence of over three metres, the state of health of the Leaning Tower of Pisa is excellent," said Opera Primaziale Pisana.

It was issuing the results of the latest check-up on the iconic landmark 21 years after an intervention that pulled it slightly back upright in 2001. "As (then project leader) Michele Jamiolkowski stressed," said Pierfrancesco Pacini, the president of the Primaziale, "the Tower's stabilization was a full blown and difficult challenge for geotechnical engineering due to the fact that the interventions at the foundations could have been dangerous and so the use of conventional technologies like cement injections or sub-foundation work bore an unacceptable risk".