Passage, passageway, corridor, hall, hallway, gallery, arcade, cloister, aisle, ambulatory designate a typically long narrow way connecting parts of a building or affording access to a particular room or section in it.
Passage (see also WAY 1 ) and passageway are the comprehensive terms, usually interchangeable with any of the others.
A corridor is a passageway flanked on one or both sides by rooms, apartments, compartments, or offices or leading from one part of a building to another.
Hall can be applied to a corridor or to a room that serves as an entrance to a house, but hallway is used only of the former.
A gallery is a corridor having a continuous row of windows; it may be a part of the building or form an enclosed veranda.
An arcade is an arched and covered passageway, usually between rows of shops but, sometimes, between the front of a row of shops and the street or an open court.
A cloister is a similar structure in a monastery or in a building imitating monastic architecture, but it runs along one or more sides of an open court or patio, and is arcaded or colonnaded on the outer side.
An aisle is, basically, not a passageway but a part of a church or other building divided from the central part, or nave, by a row of columns or piers. The term is also applied to a passage flanked by rows of seats (as in an auditorium, a theater, a railway car, or a bus).
An ambulatory is a passageway through which one may walk; it is specifically applied to the cloister of a monastery, and to the curved passageway between the choir of a church and the chapels of an apse.