Kintyre stretches about 30 miles, from the Mull of Kintyre at the southern tip to East and West Loch Tarbert in the north. At no point is it more than 11 miles wide. At Tarbert, where it connects to the region called Knapdale, it shrinks to less than two miles across. The central spine is mostly hilly moorland, with Beinn an Tuirc rising to 454 metres — modest by Scottish Highland standards but enough to shape the weather. The coastal areas, by contrast, are rich and fertile. To the east lies Kilbrannan Sound, separating the peninsula from the Isle of Arran. To the west is the open Atlantic. The southern tip is just 12 miles from Ulster across the North Channel — close enough that the two coasts have been in regular contact since the Stone Age, and close enough that on a clear day you can see Northern Ireland from the Mull.

In the early first millennium, Gaelic-speaking settlers crossed from Ireland and established a kingdom on Kintyre that they called Dál Riata. The peninsula and its surrounding islands became the heart of an early medieval realm whose most powerful kin group, the Cenél nGabráin, ruled Kintyre, Knapdale, Arran, parts of Ulster, and a swathe of inland Argyll. Christianity arrived early. In 563, Columba came to Kintyre to pay his respects to the Dál Riata kings before continuing on to Iona, where he established the monastic base from which Christianity spread through the Pictish regions to the north and east. The island of Sanda, just off Kintyre's south coast, is associated with the even earlier Saint Ninian, who is said to have built a chapel there in the early fifth century — making Kintyre one of the first parts of Scotland to be Christianised.

By the mid-12th century, a remarkable warlord named Somerled — husband of the granddaughter of the Norwegian-Manx king Godred Crovan — led a successful revolt against Norway and turned the Hebridean kingdom into something de facto independent. After his death, his sons divided his realm. His grandson Donald acquired Kintyre, along with Knapdale, Islay, and Jura. Somerled himself founded Saddell Abbey on Kintyre's east coast around 1160 — a Cistercian house whose ruins still stand on a bluff above the meeting of two streams. His son Reginald (Ragnall mac Somairle) completed and re-endowed it after Somerled's death. Tension between Norway and Scotland eventually erupted in the Battle of Largs in 1263. The Norwegian king died shortly after. In 1266, his successor formally ceded his nominal authority over the western isles to the Scottish king Alexander III in exchange for a large payment, ending more than a century and a half of Norwegian dominion over Kintyre.

Over the following centuries, control of Kintyre passed through several hands — the MacDonalds as Lords of the Isles, then the Campbells after the Scottish Reformation aligned them with the reforming Crown. In 1607, after a series of MacDonald revolts, King James VI ordered the MacDonalds' Kintyre lands transferred to Archibald Campbell, 7th Earl of Argyll. His son, the 8th Earl, devised a plan: establish a large settlement of loyal Presbyterians from Lowland Scotland around the existing village of Kinlochkilkerran at the foot of Kintyre, to dilute the local Catholic population and reduce resistance to religious reform. Under the next Earl, also Archibald, this settlement became Campbeltown. The plan worked. Kintyre's Gaelic culture was gradually replaced by Lowland Scots speech and Presbyterian habits — which is why Campbeltown today is one of the few places in the Scottish Highlands where Scots, rather than Scottish Gaelic, has long predominated.

Kintyre's prehistoric inheritance is everywhere. At Ballochroy, a trio of megaliths stands aligned with land features on the island of Jura — likely a Bronze Age astronomical observation. Burial cairns still rise from the heather at Blasthill near Southend. The remains of a 2nd-century BC stone fort survive at Kildonan near Saddell, and the imposing Iron Age hillfort of Dun Skeig watches the northern edge of the peninsula. Far more recently, Paul McCartney bought High Park Farm near Campbeltown in 1966 — long before he wrote, with bandmate Denny Laine in 1977, the Wings track 'Mull of Kintyre'. The song was the first single ever to sell over two million copies in the United Kingdom, became Wings' biggest UK hit, and was Christmas number one. The name 'Mull of Kintyre' is now known worldwide. Most who sing it have never seen the headland that inspired it.