library. There is also a cultural house, built in 1965-1966. This has 384 seats and a stage of around 50m2; the building was modernised in the mid-2000s. Social and cultural activities take place there, with well-known theatrical troupes occasionally performing. There is a children's chess club in the house, and chess can also be played seasonally in the town park. The town's festival days take place during October. The playwright Ion Luca Caragiale was a friend of mayor Condeescu, whom he parodied in his work; the latter's conversations with Caragiale and with Mihai Eminescu's brother Matei, a soldier assigned to Mizil and who became the mayor's brother-in-law, convinced him to build a theatre. It had 200 seats and opened in 1895; among the plays staged were Caragiale's. After falling into a state of degradation, it was demolished in 1968. A cinema used to operate in Mizil; this was sold to a company that promised to continue screening films but did not do so. Aside from Caragiale, the journalist Geo Bogza, writing after the town's economic decline had begun, helped impress on the public Mizil's image as a place where nothing important ever happens, in a 1938 reportage titled 175 de minute la Mizil ("175 Minutes in Mizil") and summarised as "the adventure of the banal". Other literary portrayals have been undertaken by local writers, including the poets Mihai Negulescu and Petre Strihan; the journalist and poet George Ranetti (Romeo și Julieta la Mizil, "Romeo and Juliet in Mizil"); Joachim Botez (Însemnările unui Belfer, "Notes of an Idle Rich Man"; Minerva la Mizil, "Minerva at Mizil"; De la Piatra la Mizil, "From Piatra to Mizil"; Împușcat la Mizil, "Gunned Down in Mizil"); and the novels of Cosmin Manolache since 2000, including Ce față cumplită am ("What a Cruel Face I Have"). Sport As of 1964, the football team Rapid Mizil was playing in Divizia C. By the 1985–1986 season, Mizil had a stadium, modernized by the town's mechanical plant, which owned and financed the Steaua Mizil team that played in Divizia B until it was disbanded in 2006. The abandoned stadium is now in an advanced state of degradation. There is a town-financed boxing club, as well as a modern gymnasium opened in 2007, allowing for sports such as volleyball, handball and tennis to be played. Natives Cătălin Avramescu Agatha Grigorescu Bacovia Gheorghe Eminescu Octav Mayer George Ranetti Gabriel Sandu Petre