Very few people know about it, and yet, the Crippled Church in Tomești is one of the most beautiful and interesting hiking destinations in the Ciuc region. The tower, clearly visible both from the national road and from the train, is the only architectural element left from the medieval parish church in Tomești. The old church, built in the Arpadian era and expanded in the late Gothic period, was demolished when the current church in the village centre was built, and its stones were taken to the village. At the same time, the medieval bell, the statue of the Madonna – much older than the one in Șumuleu-Ciuc, the bell cast in 1495, and the stone sacristy carved in the late Gothic style, sibling of the neighbouring sacristy in Cârța, were also brought to the new church. The two churches were most likely built by the same construction workshop, as the profile of the rib of the vault discovered during the excavation at the Ciuntita Church is identical to the ribs of the Gothic vault, still existing today, of the church in Cârța.

During the archaeological excavations at Tomești, carried out in the summer of 2002–2003, not only the buttressed walls and the altar table of the Gothic polygonal sanctuary were discovered, but also the previous semicircular sanctuary, which was the first well-documented church vestige from the Arpadian period of Ciuc.

The interior walls of this church were painted in the first half of the 15th century with large and elaborate murals. The frescoes with several figures, including saints, kings and inscriptions, were destroyed at the time of the church’s demolition. During the meticulous archaeological excavation, from the really small fragments of frescoes recovered from the rubble, the mural restorer Kiss Lóránd from Târgu Mureș reconstructed some interpretable details. Based on these, we can be sure that the murals were made by the same painter or workshop that made those of the churches in Feliceni and Dârjiu.

The exhibited fresco fragments were part of the walls of a church, abandoned for centuries, testifying to the changing times, the connections between medieval ecclesiastical art and the evocative magic of archaeology.

You can read about the 2002 archaeological excavation here, about the 2003 one here, and about the medieval period of Tomești (and the entire Ciuc) in "The Ciuc hidden in the mountains" monography. (by István Botár).