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For a three-year period, the peace and quiet of Doris Rüggeberg’s comfortable apartment on the Kapuzinerberg has been disrupted by noise from the nextdoor neighbour’s building site.

An automotive magnate, a Austrian-German automotive magnate, bought the 17th-century villa at number five as a holiday residence in 2019 for about €9m. Since that time, he has been actively remodeling the property before he and his companion move in during the winter.

The eight-room villa, referred to locally as the Paschinger Schlössl, was the residence from 1919 to 1934 to the writer Stefan Zweig, who described it as “romantic and impractical”. Among its charms, he noted, was that it was “inaccessible to cars” and could “only be accessed by ascending more than a hundred steps”.

“This peaceful setting has seemed distant in the last few years.”

Rüggeberg, a counsellor, says the construction activity has been so noisy that she has sometimes not been able to concentrate.

But as difficult as the recent period has been, she fears it could be only the beginning. The owner last month secured permission from Salzburg authorities for a project to build an roughly ten million euro private access road from a public parking area in the old town through the rugged limestone hill. The 82-year-old’s vision is that the half-kilometer route will lead to a subterranean garage next to the villa where he will be able to store multiple vehicles.

The businessman has mentioned how he enjoys driving his cars on early morning spins on the sharp bends of the Austria's highest peak, about 190 kilometers to the south of Salzburg. His original idea had been for a private elevator to be built to take him up to his home. When that was rejected, he submitted plans for the access route.

Even in this city, which is accustomed to the foibles of the wealthy elite who assemble in the city every year for the famous music festival, and which appreciates the financial contribution these wealthy guests make, this is seen by some as a step too far.

“The owner has done a lot for the local economy,” the neighbor said. “But in this case, the municipality has not negotiated effectively. Everyone is equal but some are more equal than others.” At the very least, she said, she would have preferred the city to have insisted the road be accessible to emergency vehicles, rubbish collection and other residents.

Porsche received initial permission in early 2024 from the previous city mayor, a member of the conservative Austrian People’s party, to excavate “the Autohöhle” (vehicle cavern). Shortly thereafter, the local government was taken over by a left-leaning coalition, a Social Democrat mayor and his deputy from the Communist party amid worries the rich were making the city unaffordable of their own city.

The new mayor, the mayor, worked for Porsche for over two decades and used to sit on the board of its holding company as a ex-worker representative. He has conceded “the appearance is not ideal”, but has said he has little influence over a project he “took over”.

“Nobody will have to notice the passage or even be aware it’s there,” the mayor told local press. “Whether the tunnel is appropriate for our era and ethically acceptable is for others to judge.”

Ingeborg Haller, the Green party leader on the municipal council, has led opposition to the project and maintained discussion in the public eye. “What has appalled people is that a private person is being allowed to hollow out the mountain for his personal benefit,” she said.

She has also been critical of the €48,000 fee Porsche submitted the council for permission to tunnel through land that belongs to the city. An independent expert called in by Auinger after the payment was questioned determined the applicant had paid too much by a few thousand euros.

The local planning board, which approved the road in the start of September, said the project was in the common good because as long as Porsche’s cars were in the tunnel they would not be emitting exhaust fumes, occupying space or causing accidents.

This, say critics, is absurd. “These are wildly amusing arguments, on top of many others we’ve heard, like the fact the parking lots already at the house are apparently insufficient,” the deputy mayor said.

The local official implied the situation had “undermined people’s trust in the legal system”, and strengthened the belief there was “a separate standard for the wealthy, another for the poor”.

The proposed road has also led to some imaginative demonstrations. A group of environmentalists, identifying as the Tunnel Protest Group, has displayed signs from the hill reading: “Then Porsche declared, let there be a hole.”

Despite the anger, the undertaking, having received the consent of the planning committee, is almost certain to go ahead. A decision by regional authorities is considered a formality and work is expected to start shortly.

Apart from any ecological or moral concerns associated with a billionaire’s plans to bore into a hill, there is an further aspect that makes it especially troubling for some. The villa was Zweig’s home for a significant portion of his life, before the author fled in the year 1934, concerned about the impact the rise of fascism in the country would have on his life after a ideologically driven police raid on his home.

It was at this location that Zweig, a humanist and pacifist whose memoirs influenced the 2014 Wes Anderson film The Grand Budapest Hotel, hosted intellectuals such as a Nobel laureate, an Irish writer and the composer Richard Strauss. (Long before Zweig, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s sister, Nannerl, also taught music here.)

It jars with some in the area and elsewhere that the city did not acquire the property from its former occupants and preserve it as a tribute to Zweig. Outside the villa, brass stolpersteine – or stumbling stones – commemorate Zweig, his wife, Friderike Zweig-Winternitz, and her two daughters, all of whom lived there.

Conversely, the property was purchased by Porsche, who, as noted, is “the son of an SS man … the grandson of Hitler’s best carmaker”. Ferdinand Porsche, who established the company, created the Volkswagen Beetle for the Nazi leader.

A spokesperson for the Porsche family said: “Since this is personal, we decline to comment.”