At the end of Savanorių Avenue, the old section of the Vilnius–Kaunas road winds up Paneriai Hill. The place is steeped in history but little known. In 1794 tsarist army units fleeing the insurgents retreated along this road, and in 1812 so did the remnants of Napoleon Bonaparte's Grande Armée. Pursued by the Russians, the French realised they could not get up the steep, icy slopes of Paneriai and abandoned a great deal of ammunition, artillery and even the army's treasury at the foot of the hill. There is also a monument here to the victims of the 1831 uprising, although the battle itself took place a little further away. There has probably been a road to Kaunas here since time immemorial, but no records survive from those most ancient times. The 19th-century poet and local historian Władysław Syrokomla (1823–1862) wrote that Paneriai Hill, rather “sorry-looking” and heavily dug away in his day, had once been so steep that it was hard to hold back the horses descending the old road. One of the main roads in Lithuania at the time, it was known not only for being steep but also for being narrow. Two carts could barely pass each other on it, so, according to Syrokomla, those going up the hill would fire into the air to warn those coming down. Travellers also struggled to reach the top because of a thick layer of loose sand – after all, Paneriai had long been notorious for its deep, sticky sands. The old road is listed in the Register of Cultural Property. The old section of the Vilnius–Kaunas road remained important to the city until roughly the middle of the last century. Soon more modern and wider roads for cars were built nearby, turning the ancient hill road into more of a historical curiosity.