Porsche’s billionaire chairman sparks local outrage over plans for a 500m tunnel and garage under a Salzburg landmark
Wolfgang Porsche, 81, plans to build a tunnel beneath his €8.4m mansion on Kapuzinerberg, a historic hill overlooking Salzburg.
The underground garage would house up to a dozen cars beneath the 17th-century villa. While the city has granted preliminary approval, with Porsche paying €40,000 for access rights, local opposition is growing, reports The Times.
Porsche bought the Paschinger Schlössl in 2020, but the mansion holds deep cultural significance. Novelist Stefan Zweig, who owned and renovated it in 1917, wrote some of his most famous works there.
Hosting literary gatherings, the villa earned the nickname Villa Europe before Zweig fled to Britain in 1934 amid the Nazi rise.
Porsche’s purchase of the villa was contentious, as some councillors had hoped to turn it into a memorial museum.
Tensions escalated when Porsche grew frustrated with the narrow, crowded roads leading to his property. Seeking a solution, he turned to former mayor Harald Preuner and, in February 2023, was quietly granted permission to build a 1,500sqm tunnel complex under his land. He was also allowed to use a publicly owned car park as an entrance, paying the city €40,000 (£33,000) for the rights.
The deal only surfaced after a municipal election in which the ruling conservatives were ousted and the communist party gained ground. The city’s communist group is now demanding the release of related files, while Green party councillors have also criticized the arrangement.
Ingeborg Haller, the Greens’ local leader, called it “special treatment for the super-rich” and said it “left a strange taste in the mouth.”
Porsche’s company, where he still chairs the supervisory board, dismissed the issue as a “purely private property matter.”
Meanwhile, Salzburg’s new Social Democratic mayor, Bernhard Auinger, told Taz that while transparency would have been wiser, it wasn’t his place to judge whether the tunnel was “suitable or morally justifiable.”
