Traditionally, a cultural city is generally understood as a city with cultural mechanisms such as religion, art, science, education and cultural relics as its main functions. For example, religious cities centered on temples and shrines: Bodhisattva in India, Inner Mountain in Japan, Jerusalem in Israel, Mecca in Arabia and so on. Art education cities centered on universities, libraries and cultural institutions, such as Oxford and Cambridge in Britain; Cities marked by the remains of ancient civilizations: Beijing, Xi and Luoyang in China, Nara and Kyoto in Japan, Athens in Greece and Rome in Italy.

Cultural city is the product of history. Although cultural activities are the main functions, with the trend of population gathering, market prosperity and developed transportation, the functions of commerce, tourism services, transportation and industry of such cities have also emerged, making some cultural cities develop into multifunctional comprehensive cities or transform into other main functions.

However, with regard to its theoretical definition, the connotation and definition of cultural city are rarely involved in China at present. Dai Liran and others (200 1) think that "urban culture" is a noun, especially "the sum of existing material culture and spiritual culture"; "Cultural city" is a verb, which refers to inculcating a city with culture, that is, educating people with culture and building a cultural city with culture. It is believed that the core of modern cities is cities, the core of cities is people, and the core of people is culture. Urban values culture is the soul or essence of urban culture and the key to a "cultural city". Urban normative culture (human behavior patterns, norms, lifestyles, customs, etc.). ) is the focus of "cultural city", and language and symbols are important means of "cultural city".