A team of artistic 'spidermen' have pronounced Florence's famed Duomo in good shape after two weeks feeling their way across its surface.
The crack team said Italy's mild winter had been kind to the monument's 15th century marble although its characteristic green bands, which are made of a different stone, need some attention.
The northern Tuscan 'serpentina' stone used by Renaissance architect Filippo Brunelleschi no longer exists but art restorers have found a very similar replacement in the Dolomites.
However, its crystals are somewhat fragile and require constant monitoring.
The experts' hands covered the equivalent of four soccer pitches as they caressed the cathedral's venerable marble from top to bottom, looking for cracks and crevices.
They leant out from sky-high cranes to touch the tip of Brunelleschi's famous dome and bell-tower and let themselves down on ropes to get at the Duomo's least accessible spots.
Even the slightest blemish was noted down as the 15 art restorers - some of them professional sculptors - used their trained fingers and eyes to decide what needed to be done on the Duomo and its facing baptistery.
The spidermen are only in their 30s and 40s but some of them boast 20 years of experience in art restoration.
They're even capable of sculpting replacement parts if any bits of the cathedral prove to have gone missing since the last annual surface check.
