He was the discoverer of the Venturi effect, which was described in 1797 in his Recherches Experimentales sur le Principe de la Communication Laterale du Mouvement dans les Fluides appliqué a l'Explication de Differens Phenomènes Hydrauliques,[1] translated into English by William Nicholson as "Experimental Inquiries Concerning the Principle of the Lateral Communication of a Motion in Fluids," and published in 1836 in Thomas Tredgold's Tracts on Hydraulics.

He was ordained as a priest in 1769, at the age of 23, and in the same year was appointed as teacher of logic at the seminary of Reggio Emilia, where he had earlier received an education.

During this time he was also able to complete the town of Modena's historical memoirs, which had been left incomplete following the death of Girolamo Tiraboschi, the appointed historian.

While in Paris, he came into contact with some of the most learned scholars of the age, such as Georges Cuvier, René Just Haüy, Jean-Baptiste Biot, Jérôme Lalande, Gaspard Monge, Pierre-Simon Laplace, and many more.

Jérôme Lalande, Director of the Paris Observatory, commended Venturi to General Napoleon Bonaparte as "one of the men most competent to bring renown to Italy and to build there useful waterworks and do good work in mathematics and physics," and praised his ability in the art of civil engineering and military architecture.

[4] In 1814 Venturi wrote Commentari sopra la storia e le teorie dell' ottica (Commentaries about the history and theory of optics), which included Hero of Alexandria's treatise on the dioptra[6] and from 1818 to 1821 he compiled, edited and published many of Galileo's manuscripts and letters in Memorie e lettere inedite finora o disperse di Galileo Galilei, ordinate e illustrate con annotazioni.