  The least well known structure of the Galaxy is its central region, because
of the high extinction, the crowding and the confusion between disk and bulge
sources along the line of sight. We show how the structure of the inner Galaxy
and the dust distribution can be strongly constrained by using red clump stars
as distance indicator. The results of this method applied on the deep
near-infrared survey of the inner Galactic bulge made with the Cambridge
Infrared Survey Instrument (CIRSI) are presented.
