Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias

The study of the structure of our Galaxy, particularly its inner disc, hasalways been hindered by two factors: interstellar extinction dims eventhe brightest stars at optical wavelengths and the high source densityprevents us, as the proverbial trees, to see the big galactic picture. 

With this talk we give a broad introduction of the historical efforts toalleviate these issues in the neverending quest to dig deeper into theMilky Way, followed by a overview of the first results obtained by theVVV-Vista survey, that maps the southern Galactic sky withunprecedent depth and resolution.