The Magellanic Clouds are the closest star forming galaxies, and their star formation histories can be derived in great details from color-magnitude diagrams reaching the oldest main sequence turnoffs. In the last several years, we have been conducting a wide research program on the Magellanic Clouds, including both photometry and spectroscopy, and have analysed the star formation history across both the Large and the Small Magellanic Clouds. This has revealed the nature of the stellar population gradients of these galaxies, as well as signatures that can possibly be related to their interaction history, among them and with the Milky Way.