Inter‐city association patterns can be embodied in many aspects, such as transportation, immigration, and the spread of diseases. Among these aspects, culture, as an important content of human society, is also a manifestation of inter‐city association. The recognition of inter‐city cultural association patterns plays an important role in understanding the spatial distribution pattern of culture. This article defines cultural eigenvectors to represent city cultural characteristics by mining the semantics of place names. On this basis, a cultural semantic similarity network (CSSN) is constructed to recognize inter‐city cultural association patterns. Meanwhile, the related algorithm is designed to discover the cultural spatial structures using China as a case study. Finally, four types of cultural hubs, four typical cultural belts, and 13 cultural circles are identified. This article not only recognizes the cultural importance and associations of Chinese cities, but also provides a reference for other city association studies.