Introduction

Bulge morphology has often been compared to that of elliptical galaxies, both of which were initially thought to be axisymmetric. Later it was discovered that elliptical galaxies are triaxial (see for instance de Zeeuw 1989; Bender 1988; and references therein) and soon afterward also triaxial bulges in spiral galaxies were found (Kormendy 1982; Zaritsky & Lo 1986; Bertola 1989, 1991; Shaw 1993; Varela et al. 1996). The radial surface brightness profile of a triaxial bulge usually follows a classic r¼ law and the distribution of triaxial bulges in barred and unbarred galaxies is similar (Pompei 1998), so in principle triaxiality and barred potentials are unrelated. It should be noted however that earlytype galaxies host the strongest bars, which are currently supposed to have formed a long (t > 108 yr) time ago (Noguchi 1996).