We present a new third-order, semi-discrete, central method for approximating solutions to multi-dimensional systems of hyperbolic conservation laws, convection-diffusion equations, and related problems. Our method is a high-order extension of the recently proposed second-order, semi-discrete method in [kurganov-tadmor]. The method is derived independently of the specific piecewise polynomial reconstruction which is based on the previously computed cell-averages. We demonstrate our results, by focusing on the new third-order CWENO reconstruction presented in [levy-puppo-russo] The numerical results we present, show the desired accuracy, high resolution and robustness of our method.