Cathedral of our Lady in the City of Reims located in Champagne-Ardennes is widely considered one of the finest specimens of High Gothic Style Cathedrals extant.
What makes Reims stand out is the stone carvings that generously cover the interiors and surround the portals. Their style is almost over the top Gothic; call it High Gothic, and dalliances upon the imagination long after the viewer has stepped back into the real world. The portals are in fact crowded with higher beings, certainly humanoid, though immortalized in stone, who stand in groups of fours and fives and sixes as if to greet, admonish and discuss the finer nuances of faith itself. The sadness on the faces of those in the last judgment tableau for example, is not simply profound, its power is humbling as the bare feet of the figure bowing down to those who would judge him.
Even the plinths, or bases, of these statues are loaded with even finer carvings of scenes the scholar and the would-be scholar can attempt to discern. Just as we cannot know the face of the missing heads in Last Judgment tableau, one can only vaguely grasp the hell they, who smashed these heads, were taken to. Meantime, bearing the marks of the beast, the South Portal is like a concertina of stone, telescoping inward, built on ribs of tiny stone figures, each balanced on the head of someone beneath, in a pattern of humanity, community, and devotion. The craftsmanship of these carvings is perhaps unequaled by any era.