The Little World of the Past (Italian:Piccolo mondo antico) is an 1895 novel by the Italian writer Antonio Fogazzaro. It was the author's most successful work, considered to be his "masterpiece". Fogazzaro finished the first draft in 1884, and spent the next decade revising it. The novel has an alpine backdrop, and is set in the 1850s during the Risorgimento. Fogazzaro modelled the two protagonists after his parents.