By Stephen Wilmot

For the 1920s literary celebrity Stefan Zweig, part of the charm of his "romantic and impractical" Salzburg home was that it sat on an Alpine foothill "inaccessible by car."

For automotive tycoon Wolfgang Porsche, who bought the 17th-century villa for roughly $9 million in 2020, the lack of easy access is an engineering problem with an expensive solution: a roughly 1,600-foot private tunnel through the hill to a cavernous underground garage.

The question is whether Salzburg, the picture-perfect Austrian city best known as the home of Mozart and "The Sound of Music," will give its most notable current resident the green light.

The extravagant car cave has become the talk of the town, reigniting debate over whether a municipality famous for its black-tie opera festival has one rule for the rich and another for the rest.

Doris Rüggeberg, one of Porsche's neighbors, is delighted that someone is renovating one of the city's most prominent properties.

"Salzburg is Salzburg because very rich people built these buildings that we're all proud of," she said.

But with the city's already high cost of living climbing further, the tunnel has become a flashpoint for the political left.

Maike Cyrus, who is campaigning for election to the student body of the local university, highlighted the contrast between Porsche's plan and rising rents.

"It is unacceptable to us that a superrich person is using his political contacts and money for a morally reprehensible project," she said.

Until recently, Porsche's plan was cruising in the fast lane.

Early last year, the 81-year-old got permission from Salzburg's former mayor, a member of the conservative Austrian People's Party, to hollow out a cross-shaped private garage for up to 12 cars underneath the Kapuzinerberg -- a wooded mountain rising steeply from the right bank of the river Salzach in the city center -- and connect it to his new home. To reach the subterranean garage, a tunnel would be bored through the local limestone from an existing municipal parking lot.

But then Salzburg's council made an abrupt left turn , with the Communist Party of Austria channeling worries about housing costs to take votes from the People's Party in elections that March.

"I think what amazes people is that a private individual can dig into the mountain," said Ingeborg Haller, who leads the Green Party group on the town council and has spearheaded opposition to the project.

She also questioned to the fee Porsche paid the council for permission to burrow through its land -- 40,000 euros, equivalent to roughly $44,000. The total cost of the project, which Porsche himself would cover, could be as much as EUR10 million, local press reported.

Following Haller's inquiry, Salzburg's new mayor commissioned an independent valuation. It concluded Porsche overpaid: The permission is worth EUR35,304.

The villa is a local landmark. One of just a few buildings on the Kapuzinerberg, alongside the Capuchin monastery that gives the area its name, it overlooks the church towers and hilltop fortress of the town center. The view, crowned by the snow-capped Alps at this time of year, is much photographed by the roughly 1.8 million visitors Salzburg gets annually.

Zweig used to invite world-famous authors such as James Joyce and Thomas Mann to stay at the house. Zweig himself inspired Wes Anderson's 2014 hit film "The Grand Budapest Hotel," which channeled the Jewish writer's trademark nostalgia for the old Mitteleuropa that he witnessed succumb to Nazism.

In the tunnel affair, one compromise could involve some public access to what is sometimes called the Villa Zweig -- a possibility Porsche himself mentioned when he bought it. Another might be to open the tunnel to Rüggeberg and other occupiers of the hill, who like Porsche currently have to drive up a steep, winding road and through a couple of narrow historic gateways.

Underground parking for Porsche's property will require a change to Salzburg's zoning plan and hence a council vote. This is expected to take place in mid-May.

Mayor Bernhard Auinger and his Social Democrat colleagues, who have yet to take sides, will have the casting votes. They sit between right-wing factions, who see no reason to block Porsche from carving out his garage, and the Communists and Greens, who argue the tunnel is an inappropriate use of public land.

Making the politics messier, Auinger used to sit on the board of Porsche's holding company as a labor representative. The mayor said he hadn't yet decided whether or not he needs to recuse himself from the vote.

What appears to irk locals is that Porsche received such swift service from the previous municipal government while public tunnel projects never got off the ground.

"When someone has money, the town springs into action, but when it comes to building out public transport then everything is suddenly not easy at all," Nicol Makula, a Salzburg-based graphic designer, recently wrote on social media.

A spokesman for Porsche declined to comment on the political fight.

The Salzburg villa, which is being refurbished, will be a pied-à-terre for the scion. Porsche's family home is a 600-year-old farm near Zell-am-See, an hour-and-a-half drive to the south. The property was bought by his grandfather Ferdinand Porsche, who founded the family business and designed what became the VW Beetle for Adolf Hitler.

A former barn is dedicated to a car collection numbering about 40 vehicles, including a 1993 Porsche 911 Turbo S in the family green and a 1952 open-top roadster that was designed for the U.S. market.

Porsche, who is chairman of a holding company that controls both the namesake carmaker and Volkswagen, has said he enjoys taking his cars for early-morning spins on the nearby switchbacks leading up to the Grossglockner, Austria's highest peak.

Plenty of locals sympathize with the octogenarian, decrying what they see as a political circus.

"It's the politics of envy," said Hans Peter Reitter, a retired bank manager. "It is so embarrassing in Salzburg when there are serious and important problems to solve."

Write to Stephen Wilmot at stephen.wilmot@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 15, 2025 23:00 ET (03:00 GMT)

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