As the interacting generalization of topological insulators, symmetry protected topological (SPT) phases have garnered considerable interest in the past decade. Over the past few years, exciting progress has been made in the theory of SPT phases with crystalline symmetry. In this talk, I will show that all these SPT phases can be adiabatically deformed into a special class of states, called topological crystals, which are real-space crystalline patterns of lower-dimensional topological states. I will explain how to classify and characterize SPT phases protected by crystalline symmetries by this approach. This way of thinking provides a simple physical picture of crystalline SPT phases, and also allows one to understand various characteristic edge or surface properties.