The Archaeological Museum of Sfax gives useful historical depth to a city whose medina often gets most of the attention. Its collections cover the Punic, Roman, Byzantine, and early Islamic periods, with mosaics, inscriptions, ceramics, and architectural fragments from Sfax and the wider southern Tunisian coast.
The museum is best visited before or after wandering the medina walls and souks. It is modest in size, but the objects help explain why Sfax was never just a commercial port: this part of Tunisia has been tied into Mediterranean trade and settlement for a very long time.