The Galactic Bulge has long been assumed to be a largely old stellar population .
However , some recent studies based on observations with the HST WF/PC-1 and WFPC2 of stars in the Galactic Bulge have concluded that the old population may not make up more then 30 % of the total .
Other studies using HST/WFPC2 differential studies of ‘ Bulge ’ globular clusters and field stars have found the bulge to be comparable in age to the Galactic Halo .
A complication in all these studies is the presence of a substantial population of stars which mimic a young bulge population , but which may be , and are often assumed to be , foreground disk stars whose reddening and distance distributions happen to mimic a young bulge turnoff .
We show , using number counts in HST/WFPC2 colour-magnitude diagrams of both field stars in the Bulge and of two ‘ bulge ’ and one ‘ disk ’ globular cluster ( NGC6528 , NGC6553 , and NGC5927 ) that the stars interpreted as young in fact are foreground disk stars .
Thus , we confirm that the bulk of the bulge field stars in Baade ’ s Window are old .
The existence of a young metal-rich population can not , however , be ruled out from our data .

We also test for age and metallicity gradients in the Galactic Bulge between the two low extinction windows Baade ’ s window ( \ell = 1 \fdg 1 ,b = -4 \fdg 8 ) and Sagittarius-I ( \ell = 1 \fdg 3 ,b = -2 \fdg 7 ) .
We use the colour-magnitude diagram of a metal-rich globular cluster as an empirical isochrone to derive a metallicity difference of \la 0.2 dex between Baade ’ s window and SGR-I window .
This corresponds to a metallicity gradient of \la 1.3 dex/kpc , in agreement with recent near-IR CMD studies .
Such a steep gradient , if detected , would require the existence of a short scale length inner component to the Bulge , most likely that prominent in the near infra red , which perhaps forms a separate entity superimposed on the larger , optical Bulge as observed in Baade ’ s window .