Monero public address is what you publish to get paid.
An address can be generated offline and for free. It boils down to generating a large random number representing your private spending key.
Publishing your Monero address does __not__ endanger your privacy. That's because in Monero transactions go to stealth addresses which are decoupled from your public address.
There are a few types of public addresses in Monero:
* Standard address - the basic type of the address, also refered to as raw address
* Integrated address - embeds payment ID so you can learn for what you are being paid
It also contains a checksum and a "network byte" which actually identifies both the network and the address type.
Data structure ([src](https://github.com/monero-project/monero/blob/f7b9f44c1b0d53170fd7f53d37fc67648f3247a2/src/cryptonote_basic/cryptonote_basic_impl.cpp#L159)):
0 | 1 | identifies the network and address type; [18](https://github.com/monero-project/monero/blob/793bc973746a10883adb2f89827e223f562b9651/src/cryptonote_config.h#L149) - main chain; [53](https://github.com/monero-project/monero/blob/793bc973746a10883adb2f89827e223f562b9651/src/cryptonote_config.h#L161) - test chain
1 | 32 | public spend key
33 | 32 | public view key
65 | 4 | checksum ([Keccak-f[1600] hash](https://github.com/monero-project/monero/blob/8f1f43163a221153403a46902d026e3b72f1b3e3/src/common/base58.cpp#L261) of the previous 65 bytes, trimmed to first [4](https://github.com/monero-project/monero/blob/8f1f43163a221153403a46902d026e3b72f1b3e3/src/common/base58.cpp#L53) bytes)
It totals to 69 bytes. The bytes are then encoded ([src](https://github.com/monero-project/monero/blob/8f1f43163a221153403a46902d026e3b72f1b3e3/src/common/base58.cpp#L240)) in [Monero specific Base58](/cryptography/base58) format, resulting in a 95 chars long string. Example standard address:
