The geographical heart of Brazil is the central highlands (Planalto Central), shared between the states of Goiás, Tocantins and parts of Mato Grosso. This rapidly developing and increasingly prosperous agricultural region was as recently as fifty years ago still largely Indian country, with a few colonial towns precariously linked by oxcart trails to the rest of the country. The founding of the national capital, Brasília, in the late 1950s changed all that, shifting Brazil's centre of gravity decisively from the coast to the interior and opening up an entire region of the country to settlement and development.

Love it or loathe it, Brazil's capital is like nowhere else on earth; the world's largest, most successful and in its own weird way most beautiful planned city, it remains the main reason for visiting the planalto. Brasília's chief attraction is its extraordinary city architecture, its late-Fifties vision of the future now charmingly retro, even sliding over into kitsch. While the capital is no metropolis it is much more cosmopolitan than its relatively small size suggests, heaving with restaurants and bars where much of the city's business is transacted, as befits a place where politics is the main local industry. Brasília is well connected by long but good-quality roads to the rest of the country – to Mato Grosso to the west, to Belém and the Northeast, to Rio, São Paulo and the South, and to the even more distant Rondônia and Acre in the western Amazon.

Although Brasília may be the region's main draw, it is by no means the only one. In recent years, the city has become the base for a significant ecotourism boom, still almost entirely Brazilian, and made up of middle-class punters from Brasília itself and landlocked Minas Gerais. People come for the emptiness and beauty of the landscape a few hours north of Brasília, as well as great hiking and more specialized outdoor pursuits like caving and rock climbing. The main centre, Parque Nacional Chapada dos Veadeiros, is an easy excursion from Brasília, and if time is limited, the spectacular waterfall of Salto de Itiquira is a rewarding day-trip. There is also a national park, the Parque Nacional de Brasília, with hiking trails on the city's periphery.

The planalto itself is still at that ideal stage of tourist development where there is enough infrastructure to make it accessible and enjoyable, but not so much that you ever feel things are too crowded or over-commercialized. The highlands were traversed in their earliest days by Portuguese expeditions, and many a planalto town can trace its origins to a paulista bandeira looking for mines and Indian slaves. Two colonial towns in particular are worth visiting, both in Goiás: Pirenópolis, within easy reach of Brasília, and the old capital of Goiás state, Goiás Velho, a little-visited jewel that is as beautiful as any of the better known cidades históricas of Minas Gerais. Further north still, the state of Tocantins has its eastern and western frontiers defined by two of the largest tributaries of the Amazon, the Araguaia and Tocantins, but with the exception of one of the largest riverine islands in the world, the Ilha do Bananal, the state has little to offer the visitor and is best bypassed on the way to more interesting destinations in the North or Northeast.