The hills are alive with the sound of bickering, where a Porsche heir's desire to build a private tunnel through one of Salzburg's iconic hills is causing a divide. Perched on the Kapuzinerberg hill along the Salzach River in Austria, the 17th-century villa can only be reached via a steep drive that can ice over in winter. Wolfgang Porsche—grandson of the company bearing that name—bought the place for $9 million five years ago and is seeking to build a roughly 1,640-foot private tunnel that will lead from a municipal parking lot to an private underground parking garage that could hold up to a dozen cars. 6 Speed Online reports a footpath tunnel extending from the garage would lead to the villa.
In early 2024, Porsche quietly got the OK from the city's former mayor to go ahead with the plan and was charged a fee of roughly $44,000 for the right of entry; the entire cost of the project is expected to hit $11 million. But some local council members opposed, saying they had been kept in the dark about the deal and challenging both the decision to grant such use of public land and the fee. The AFP reports local Green Party leader Ingeborg Haller has been vocal in her displeasure with what she called a "back-door deal," saying, "Salzburg is UNESCO-listed. We are also in a nature reserve here and this is simply a highly sensitive area."
An independent valuation ordered by the city's new mayor found the fee actually should have been less: closer to $40,000. The Wall Street Journal reports some compromises have been floated: allowing for some public access to the villa, perhaps, or letting other residents on the hill use the tunnel. The council vote that would permit underground parking on Porsche's property is slated for mid-May. (More Salzburg stories.)
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