Chemical abundances in stars and gas tell us about the formation and evolution of galaxies, as well as stellar nucleosynthesis. I will discuss how we can retrieve the history of formation and evolution of the Milky Way by means of Galactic archaeology, namely by means of detailed chemical evolution models predicting the evolution of the abundances of several chemical elements in the gas in galaxies. I will focus on the Milky Way and some highlights will be discussed: i) the formation and evolution of the Galactic halo and bulge. In particular, I will discuss whether the Galactic halo has formed in situ or by accretion of stars from satellites; ii) the formation and evolution of the solar neighbourhood and the whole disk. In particular, I will present an interpretation of the abundances and abundance ratios in thick and thin disk stars, and discuss the formation of abundance gradients along the thin disk. Finally, I will show also the application of chemical evolution models to the derivation of of Galactic habitable zones in the Milky Way.