In its first part, this paper summarizes recent work on the mass and shape of the Galactic dark halo. The second part presents a review of the large-scale structure of the Milky Way, and of the evidence that the inner Galaxy is dominated by baryonic matter. This is briefly compared with the predictions of ΛCDM and MOND. Finally, a summary is given of bulge formation from clumpy, gas-rich disks, a process which may give rise to old, disk-like, α-rich bulges similar to the Galactic bulge.