  We present a photometric investigation of the globular cluster population of
NGC 1399, the central galaxy in the Fornax cluster, in Washington C and Kron R
filters within a field of 36'x36'. This is the largest area around this galaxy
ever studied with CCD photometry. The cluster system of NGC 1399 is found to
extend further than 100 kpc away from the galaxy. The color distribution
exhibits a pronounced bimodality. Within a radial distance of about 55 kpc, the
red clusters are more strongly concentrated to the center than the
blueclusters. At larger radii, the surface density profiles of the clusters are
indistinguishable and match well the distribution of the galaxy light. Over the
entire radial distance range, the surface brightness profile of NGC 1399 can be
very well fitted by a power law with an exponent of -1.85 and a core radius of
3.3". No steepening of the luminosity profile can be detected at large radii.
We suggest that the power law profile of NGC 1399 results from the galaxy being
embedded in a large dark matter halo, which prevents the stellar density
profile from steepening outwards. The cluster system contains 6450+-700
clusters and the specific frequency is found to be 5.1+-1.2 in the V band.
While NGC 1399 shows a pronounced color gradient. Using simple assumptions
about the underlying population that formed during the same star formation
event as the globular clusters, we presenta model in which we use radially
changing local specific frequencies for the red and blue subpopulations to fit
the observations. We find that within 7' the required specific frequency of the
blue clusters alone is a factor of approximately 3 larger than that of the red
ones. Outside this radius however, both populations have a high local specific
frequency of around 10.
