  The description of baryons as chiral solitons of the Nambu--Jona--Lasinio
(NJL) model is reviewed. A motivation for the soliton description of baryons is
provided from large $N_C$ QCD. Rigorous results on the spontaneous breaking of
chiral symmetry in QCD are discussed. It is then argued that the NJL model
provides a fair description of low--energy hadron physics. The NJL model is
therefore employed to mimic the low--energy chiral flavor dynamics of QCD. The
model is bosonized by functional integral techniques and the physical content
of the emerging effective meson theory is discussed. In particular, its
relation to the Skyrme model is established. The static soliton solutions of
the bosonized NJL model are found, their properties discussed, and the
influence of various meson fields studied. These considerations provide strong
support of Witten's conjecture that baryons can be understood as soliton
solutions of effective meson theories. The chiral soliton of the NJL model is
then quantized in a semiclassical fashion and various static properties of the
nucleon are studied. The dominating $1/N_C$ corrections to the semiclassically
quantized soliton are investigated. Time--dependent meson fluctuations off the
chiral soliton are explored and employed to estimate the quantum corrections to
the soliton mass. Finally, hyperons are described as chiral solitons of the NJL
model. This is done in both, the collective rotational approach of Yabu and
Ando as well as in the bound state approach of Callan and Klebanov.
