End Structures
Structures found in the End dimension, including end cities and end ships.
Tall purpur block towers
Small bedrock frame portal
Floating ship attached to end city
What waits past the dragon
Everything worth finding in the End is on the outer islands, and the easy way there only opens once the Ender Dragon is dead.
End Gateway
Each dragon kill spawns one of these small bedrock portals at the edge of the main island, up to 20 in total. Throw an ender pearl into it, or fly straight in with elytra, and it sends you far out to the outer islands. A second gateway appears near where you land and brings you back.
End City
Purpur towers on the larger outer islands, guarded by shulkers. Their bullets give you Levitation for 10 seconds, and over the void that is the real danger. A shulker drops a shell half the time, or 68.75% of the time with Looting III, and two shells with a chest make a shulker box.
End Ship
Not every city has one. Each bridge off a tower has a 12.5% chance of ending at a ship, and the ship is where the elytra hangs in an item frame, next to two chests and a brewing stand with two Potions of Healing II. A dragon head sits on the bow.
Finding them
/locate structure minecraft:end_city finds the nearest city. End ships have no ID of their own because they generate as part of a city, so the command takes you to the city and the bridges are up to you.
Without the command, look at the biome. Java only starts a city in the end highlands or the end midlands, the biomes that cover the larger outer islands, and only where the ground around the spot is at Y 60 or higher. The game picks one spot in every square of 20 by 20 chunks, 320 by 320 blocks, and when that spot fails either check, the square has no city at all.
Where a gateway drops you
In Java Edition a gateway on the main island first aims 1,024 blocks out from the center of the End, in its own direction. If that point is already land, the game steps back toward the center 16 blocks at a time, at most 16 times, until it reaches a chunk with nothing in it. From there it steps outward again, 16 blocks at a time and again at most 16 times, until it finds a chunk with blocks in it. That puts you close to the edge of the land that faces the main island.
In that chunk it looks for end stone with room to stand on. When there is none, it generates a small end stone island at Y 75 and sends you there, so you arrive on solid ground either way.
Before you go through
Bring plenty of blocks for bridging between islands, a stack of ender pearls, and slow falling potions or a water bucket for the moment a shulker bullet lifts you off an edge. Anything that falls into the void is gone, you and your items included, and beds explode in the End just like in the Nether.