Set default x-axis tick labels on the top

We can use rcParams["xtick.labeltop"] (default False) and rcParams["xtick.top"] (default False) and rcParams["xtick.labelbottom"] (default True) and rcParams["xtick.bottom"] (default True) to control where on the axes ticks and their labels appear. These properties can also be set in the .matplotlib/matplotlibrc.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np


plt.rcParams['xtick.bottom'] = plt.rcParams['xtick.labelbottom'] = False
plt.rcParams['xtick.top'] = plt.rcParams['xtick.labeltop'] = True

x = np.arange(10)

fig, ax = plt.subplots()

ax.plot(x)
ax.set_title('xlabel top', pad=24)  # increase padding to make room for labels

plt.show()