It is pointed out that the hadron spectroscopy should be a study of the structure of the QCD vacuum, low‐energy elementary excitations on top of which are hadrons. Concentrating on the dynamical breaking of the chiral symmetry in the QCD vacuum, we emphasize the importance to clarify what is going on with mesons in theI=J= 0‐channel, i.e., the sigma meson channel, because it is connected to the quantum fluctuations of the chiral order parameter. After summarizing the significance of the sigma meson in QCD and low‐energy hadron phenomenology, we give a review on some theoretical and experimental effort to try to reveal the possible restoration of chiral symmetry in hot and dense nuclear matter including heavy nuclei. © 2002 American Institute of Physics