I hope to color this, but I want to add people to it first. Design for a walkway that commoners would use to get from one side of the palace to the other. Then the royalty and nobility could either walk among them or cross right over their heads in that upstairs hallway to get to the other side of the building.

Based on sections of the Moon Place from Sailor Moon by Naoko Takueuchi (plus Kimiski because she was trying to map out the palace and I came up with this trying to help her).

Also with lots of influence from the upper floor walkways used by the Medici and thier class in Florence, this one section of the Louvre in Paris that you can drive through (Though if your in a fat tour bus its kind of a terrifyingly tight squeeze), The outside of the Doge's Palace in Venice (for the sort of column surrounded building that's more foreward) and various other bits of Italy for all the statuary I set into the walls.