The Central Market occupies a covered hall just inside the medina gate near Avenue Bourguiba and is where Tunis buys its food: fresh fish laid on ice, pyramids of spices and dried chillis, tables of Tunisian olives in twenty varieties, blood oranges, pomegranates, and the local sheep's cheese. The meat section is less for the faint-hearted. Early morning is the best time — the market fills from around 7am and is at its liveliest by 9am.
The surrounding streets have small restaurants where you can eat what the market sells — couscous, brik, and grilled fish at low prices in no-nonsense surroundings. The market is free to enter and is one of the best places in Tunis to observe ordinary urban life away from the tourist pressure of the medina souks.