  Observations of the stellar content of the bulge of the Milky Way can provide
critical guidelines for the interpretation of observations of distant galaxies,
in particular for understanding their stellar content and evolution. In this
brief overview I will first highlight some recent work directed towards
measuring the history of star formation and the chemical composition of the
central few parsecs of the Galaxy. These observations point to an episodic
history of star formation in the central region with several bursts having
occurred over the past few 100 Myr (e.g. Blum et al. 1996b). High resolution
spectroscopic observations by Ram\'{\i}rez et al. (1998) of luminous M stars in
this region yield a near solar value for [Fe/H] from direct measurements of
iron lines. Then I will present some results from an ongoing program by my
colleagues and myself the objective of which is the delineation of the star
formation and chemical enrichment histories of the central 100 parsecs of the
Galaxy, the ``inner bulge''. From new photometric data we have concluded that
there is a small increase in mean [Fe/H] from Baade's Window to the Galactic
Center and deduce a near solar value for stars in the central region. For
radial distances greater than 1$^{\circ}$ from the Galactic Center we fail to
find a measurable population of stars that are significantly younger than those
in Baade's Window. Within 1$^{\circ}$ we find a number of luminous M giants
that most likely are the result of a star formation episode not more than one
or two Gyr ago.
