Manifest: Manifest describes assembly itself. Assembly Name, version number, culture, strong name, list of all files, Type references, and referenced assemblies.
Metadata: Metadata describes contents in an assembly classes, interfaces, enums, structs, etc., and their containing namespaces, the name of each type, its visibility/scope, its base class, the nterfaces it implemented, its methods and their scope, and each method?s parameters, type?s properties, and so on.