Abstract: Nuclear organization creates microenvironments favoring distinct nuclear functions. In budding yeast, silent chromatin regions such as telomeres are clustered at the nuclear periphery, creating zones of transcriptional repression. Recently, in the Journal of Cell Biology, Therizols et al. report that 'telomere tethering at the nuclear periphery is essential for DNA double strand break repair in subtelomeric regions'. Here, we discuss these results and their functional implications.