The understanding of complex stellar populations and their star formation histories relies on the stellar evolution theory as much as the improvement of our knowledge of the stellar evolution relies on the study of stellar populations. In this context, testing stellar evolution models is fundamental to properly evaluate the reliability of the

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Massive star formation in the central regions of spiral galaxies plays an important role in the dynamical and secular evolution of their hosts. Here, we summarise a number of recent investigations of the star formation history and the physical conditions of the gas in circumnuclear regions, to illustrate not only the detailed results one can

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We present initial results from a survey of nearby AGN using the near infrared adaptive optics integral field spectrograph SINFONI. These data enable us to probe the distribution and kinematics of the gas and stars at spatial resolutions as small as 0.085”, corresponding in some cases to less than 10 pc. In this contribution we present results

We present stellar parameters and metallicities for a sample of 64 high metal content stars not known to harbor any planet. This sample provides the reference for investigating new correlations between stars and the existence of an orbiting planet.