Traditional and New Sensing Techniques Combination for the Identification of the Forgotten “New Flour-Weighing House” in Valencia, Spain

In the city of Valencia (Spain), there existed from the Middle Ages until the mid-nineteenth century a building that fulfilled a municipal strategic function: The “new flour-weighing house”. Its purpose was to distribute food to the population and collect the corresponding indirect municipal taxes. Today, the existence of this building is not remembered, neither by scientists nor by citizens, and its importance, location and appearance are unknown. The building investigated, behind which the medieval façade of the “flour-weighing house” is hidden, is the Colomina Palace. In the investigation, its growth phases have been detected, and an idea of its structural organisation has been obtained. Research and investigation have been carried out by consulting historical, cartographic and archival material, together with advanced geomatics techniques, including close-range photogrammetry, terrestrial laser scanning and thermography. The fuse of colour and thermal imagery, together with point clouds and 3D models, help to visualise and check the different spatial transformations of the current “Colomina Palace”, adapting the sequence from medieval times into present. The methodology proposed in this study avoids the need to carry out destructive tests and the processing of permits, which speeds up decision-making and historical architectural reconstruction.